Mystic River: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

9/07/2007 Posted by Admin

Good, occasionally powerful, overhyped noir

(Originally published 2003)

Clint Eastwood's “Mystic River” tells the story of three boyhood friends divided by an act of sexual abuse in the early 1970s and then joined again in the present by murder. The film is slow-going but precise, a bleak, working-class tragedy set in Boston that’s darkened by Shakespearean undertones.

Essentially a police procedural, the guts of which ultimately hinge on contrivance and coincidence, the movie, from a script Brian Helgeland based on Dennis Lehane’s best-selling, 2001 crime novel, hails from a major studio (Warner Bros.) but it nevertheless embraces an independent filmmaking spirit, one that demands less flash and better acting than your typical whodunit.

The film opens in the ‘70s with the surreal abduction of one of the boys by two pedophiles before fading to black and picking up their stories 25 years later on the eve of murder.

There’s Dave (Tim Robbins), whose molestation as a child has turned him into a near zombie as an adult; Jimmy (Sean Penn), a proud dad and convenience store owner hardened by two years in prison yet softened by a loving wife (Laura Linney) and family; and Sean (Kevin Bacon), the responsible homicide detective whose marriage is near collapse.

None are close, but all live close-by, and when Jimmy’s 19-year-old daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum), is murdered on the same night that Dave comes home to his nervous wife, Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden), with blood on his hands, the movie’s core mystery builds. Is Dave the killer? And if so, what would possibly drive him to murder Jimmy’s daughter?

Conveniently, it’s up to Dave’s friend, Sean, and Sean’s partner, Whitey (Laurence Fishburne), to find out before Jimmy gets his own ideas and decides to take matters into his own hands.

What ensues is good, occasionally powerful noir that’s been overhyped. This story of grief and revenge is indeed lifted by its fine performances--Penn, Bacon and Fishburne are all standouts--but it’s undermined by Robbins’ inability to connect with his troubled character, Eastwood’s failure to fully develop his female characters, and a pat plot hook involving a mute boy that’s a left-field stretch.

It’s curious. This is Eastwood’s 24th turn as a director, and what he has become as a director is nearly as interesting as the movies he’s directing.

The man who once stood for vigilante justice in such box-office hits as “Dirty Harry,” “Magnum Force” and “The Enforcer,” now stands for sophistication, restraint and complexity of emotion at the cineplex. His camera has become his gun, his vision the bullet that leaves its mark.

“Mystic River” doesn’t have the richness of Eastwood’s “Unforgiven,” but in Penn’s Jimmy, it does find a character whose guilt, rage and neighborhood absolution remain with you after the movie ends.

Grade: B