Mystic River

Release Date: October 8, 2003 (limited; wide release: October 15)
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Brian Helgeland
Starring: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: R (for language and violence)
Official Website: MysticRivermovie.com

Plot Summary: When they were kids growing up together in a rough section of Boston, Jimmy Markum (Penn), Dave Boyle (Robbins) and Sean Devine (Bacon) spent their days playing stickball on the street, the way most boys did in their blue-collar neighborhood of East Buckingham. Nothing much ever happened in their neighborhood. That is, until Dave was forced to take the ride that would change all of their lives forever. Twenty-five years later, the three find themselves thrust back together by another life altering event – the murder of Jimmy’s 19-year-old daughter. Now a cop, Sean is assigned to the case and he and his partner (Fishburne) are charged with unraveling the seemingly senseless crime. They must also stay one step ahead of Jimmy, a man driven by an all consuming rage to find his daughter’s killer. Connected to the crime by a series of circumstances, Dave is forced to confront the demons of his own past. Demons that threaten to destroy his marriage and any hope he may have for a future. As the investigation tightens around these three friends, an ominous story unfolds that revolves around friendship, family and innocence lost too soon.

Reviewed by Peter Veugelaers © 2003
- Words escape me ... ecstasy

It is easy to contrast vividly the criminal drama "Mystic River" with films that have crime as its subject matter, but accentuate action at the expense of character. Take Bad Boys for example. Clint Eastwood, director and co-producer of "Mystic River", is comfortable exploring the pathology of his characters, like in Unforgiven, and in his latest film depicts how one murder in a small neighborhood becomes a painful study into the human condition.

Three boyhood friends growing up in an Irish Catholic suburb of Boston separate during the uncertainty of time and years later the murder of one friend’s daughter, Nineteen-year-old Katie, brings them back together.

Jimmy (Sean Penn) is the aggrieved father, a corner store owner married to Annabeth (Laura Linney). Out of prison for eighteen years he seeks the murderer out through two snooping accomplices, while two detectives – played by Laurence Fisburne and Kevin Bacon (as Sean) – investigate the case. Jimmy and Sean’s childhood friend, the melancholic Dave (Tim Robbins), who harbours a dark secret from the past which has affected him in the present, gets entangled in a fight with a mugger during the night of the murder and becomes a suspect. Also suspected is Katie’s boyfriend Brendan (Tom Guiry) who was going to elope with her to Las Vegas.

The events and characters stand out in this because they are real; the unfolding story has a sense of authenticity that this could really happen and the acting is consistently superb supercharging the in-depth characterisations.

The police investigation, where Fishburne and Bacon hunt out clues and discuss possibilities, a thorough and compelling police detective drama in its own right, does not offer as much in the way of complex character development as Penn and Robbins’ characters who are more multi-complex because of their dilemmas. All the same, Bacon’s character is revealed as having a troubled history – he is separated from his pregnant wife - and Fisburne and Bacon get revealing dialogue and squeeze nuances out of their performances that create subtle shades of meaning and depth.

Penn and Robbins establish the inner turmoil of their characters and their histories with compelling breadth and complexity. Through their eyes is a tragic multi-layered picture of the human condition. They are people entwined in the vicious recycling of violence throughout the generations, making the scope of the film epic in its human tragedy. The Boston neighbourhood is a network of dysfunctional individuals hidden beneath the surface layers of normality, the Catholic tone of propriety notable in a few scenes. The regurgitation of violence involves a stunningly authentic and vulnerable performance from Marcia Gay Harden as Dave’s wife embroiled in his predicament and prone to doubting her husband’s innocence.

Jimmy’s responses after the murder of his daughter are irrational and somewhat impotent because he is grieving over her loss. His suffering is symbolised towards the end, like he is bearing his own cross. One response leads him to murder, and one thing he desires is clemency. Jimmy hides something unresolved by film’s end.

There is a sense that the whole neighbourhood is in birth pangs - hiding under the fear of dread and imploding, but awaiting the winds of change. The story is therefore true to the nature of life: a society and its individuals cannot function properly under the stripes of disintegration and need a way out of mental torture. However, there are no solutions in "Mystic River". Families are dysfunctional in gritty, sometimes graphic, detail. There is no sacrifice for sins, or obvious penitence, or miracle cure for pierced souls, yet the desire for sanctification echoes throughout Penn and Robbins’ performances and the enormity of their problems implies a hefty price for their redemption, and a long wait for the winds of change.