The British tear-jerker “London River’’ features on-target acting by its two leads, but they receive scant support from the wobbly plot. The setting is London in the days immediately following the 2005 terrorist explosions that killed 56 people, including the four bombers, and wounded 700 more. Elizabeth, played by Brenda Blethyn, the wonderful star of Mike Leigh’s 1996 movie “Secrets & Lies,” is a farmer who goes to London to find her teen daughter, who’s stopped answering her cellphone. Ousmane (an excellent Sotigui Kouyaté), an elderly African man working as a forester in France, visits the city to find his son, who’s also missing.
In a series of too-convenient encounters, Elizabeth, a Christian, and Ousmane, a Muslim, join forces and discover their children were lovers living together in a Muslim neighborhood. This news doesn’t go over well with the Islamophobic Elizabeth, allowing director and co-writer Rachid Bouchareb to make points about racial prejudice. But the contrived script lacks subtlety, rendering most characters as stereotypes.