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Mystic River review
2004.03.01 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole
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Sean Penn is overwhelmed with fear and anger. [official site] |
In Mystic River, Clint Eastwood takes us down the long, lonely road to Hell, paved with good intentions. The story is set up cleverly, so that we don't know if Tim Robbins' character is guilty of the crime in question. But we know he's guilty of something.
As a kid, Robbins' character was abducted from his tough section of Boston by two men pretending to be plainclothes cops—as his friends looked on helpless. Those friends grew into Kevin Bacon, who became a real plainclothes cop, and Sean Penn, who... didn't.
Penn's character owns a little store but is frequently accompanied by a couple of tough guys who clearly have more loyalty to him than to the law. When Penn's daughter is murdered after a night out at a local bar, his anger knows no bounds. Meanwhile, Robbins came home that night bloodied up, telling his wife a suspicious story about fighting a mugger who "may have died" as a result.... With that, the setup is complete, the outcome almost inevitable.
With a cast like this, we can expect heartfelt moments of moral outrage and social disgust, coupled with a pinch of self-loathing, and we get them. It's tempered by flint-hearted director Clint Eastwood but bolstered by a supporting cast that specializes in co-dependency: Lawrence Fishburn (The Matrix), Marcia Gay Harden (Pollock), and Laura Linney (The Life of David Gale).
This is the kind of delicious mix that you just can't get unless the script is great. Eastwood directed a Brian Helgeland screenplay (Blood Work, Knight's Tale, Conspiracy Theory) from a Dennis Lehane novel. All the pieces fall together in the right way. The plotting often seems a little heavy, but never contrived.
Mystic River deserves its rewards.
f e e d b a c k
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