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Mystic River - Special 3-Disc Edition Customer Reviews (43 - 45 of 82 Reviews)
"Mystic River" is Eastwood's finest masterpiece to date!
Directed by double Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood (Best Director and Best Picture, "Unforgiven" (1992)) from a screenplay by Brian Helgeland ("L.A. Confidential"), based on a bestseller by ace mystery writer Dennis Lehane, and starring such respected, actorly heavyweights as Sean Penn ("I Am Sam"), Tim Robbins ("Mission to Mars"), Kevin Bacon ("Flatliners"), Laurence Fishburne (The "Matrix" films), Marcia Gay Harden ("Meet Joe Black"), and Laura Linney ("The Mothman Prophecies"), "Mystic River" has as unimpeachable a pedigree as any American studio film in history. And though it may not quite be the masterpiece that the early buzz suggests, it certainly makes the most of the tremendous talents at its disposal. A mournful meditation on revenge and guilt, "Mystic River" is perhaps Eastwood's most mature and moving examination yet of what has always been his great subject: the peculiarly American juxtaposition of vigilante violence and official justice.
The film flows from two linked moments of violence, which, in turn, beget other violence -- one moment that pulls three childhood friends apart and another, 30 years later, that brings them back together. "Mystic River" opens in the '70s (the period established by a transistor radio broadcasting a Red Sox game with Luis Tirant on the mound), in a working-class neighborhood, as three boys play street hockey. There's Dave, who seems a little slow, Jimmy, a reckless kid who wants to steal a neighborhood car for joyriding, and Sean, a cautious kid who frowns on Jimmy's plan. Finding a slab of sidewalk where the concrete is still wet, the boys begin writing their names only to be confronted by two older men posing as cops, who take Dave away in the back of their car, where he is kept for several days and sexually abused before escaping. Flashing forward to the same neighborhood decades later, Dave (Robbins) is an introverted husband and father who doesn't seem to have quite recovered from his childhood ordeal. Jimmy (Penn) is an ex-con who runs a corner grocery store in the neighborhood but is still crime-connected. And Sean (Bacon) is now a Boston homicide detective, an outsider in the old neighborhood, working his beat with an astute African-American partner named Whitey (Fishburne). Jimmy and Dave are still friends -- Jimmy's ice-queen wife Annabeth (Linney) is a cousin of Dave's warm but (understandibly) skittish wife Celeste (Harden) -- but all three friends are brought together when Jimmy's 19 year-old daughter Katie (Emmy Rossum) turns up missing, and later dead, on the same night that Dave returns home late covered in someone else's blood. A distraught Jimmy, not waiting for the legal system to work, has a couple of his neighborhood goons out looking for the killer, while Sean is assigned to work the case. (The parallel police and underworld investigations might be a nod to Fritz Lang's serial-killer masterpiece 'M', which would only be a beginning to the debt "Mystic River" owes to Lang's artful police procedurals.) As Sean and Whitey investigate the case, dual clues point strongly to two suspects: Dave, one of the last people to see Katie alive, and a neighborhood boy whom she had been dating.
By acclimation, "Mystic River" is Clint Eastwood's finest film since 1992's Oscar-winner "Unforgiven", and you'll find no argument here. A handsome, old-fashioned film, it's so stately, so measured, and so elegant that it acts as a formal rebuke to most other contemporary studio takes on this kind of material. "Mystic River" is a mystery spiked with deep emotion and considerable gravitas. It has a tremendous feel for its location, for this almost tribal old-school neighborhood on the brink of gentrification. It's marked by a tight vocabulary of formal elements -- sure crosscutting and sweeping pans over the film's title waterway. Most of all, it seems intentionally driven by a vast series of doubles and rhymes: two wives, two mute witnesses, two murders, two investigations, two friends whose lives go in opposite directions, two heartbreaking shots -- 30 years apart -- of Dave in the backseat of a car being taken away. And this matches the film's series of actorly one-on-one confrontations: Dave and Celeste, Dave and Jimmy, Celeste and Jimmy, Jimmy and Sean, Jimmy and Annabeth. But Eastwood's precise, conservative direction makes room for occasional visual flourishes, such as the operatic matching aerial shots that show Katie's bloodied, beaten body, found in a park, and nearby Jimmy howling as he's held back by a phalanx of cops.
As one might expect, "Mystic River" is as much an actor's film as it is a director's. Its performances are uniformly excellent, with Sean Penn's and Tim Robbins' showy turns perhaps bested by Marcia Gay Harden, whose doting but doubtful wife is perhaps the film's most tragic figure. "Mystic River" isn't perfect. Laura Linney's underwritten part makes Annabeth's sinister, ruthless late transformation seem awkward and abrupt, and sometimes Eastwood reaches a little too much for effect (or for the Oscar) when the generally understated music swells more than necessary. But these are just quibbles.
"I'm gonna find him. I'm gonna find him before the police do and I'm gonna kill him," Jimmy says as he stands over Katie's lifeless body. His insistence on keeping that promise is the source of Eastwood's most effective critique yet of American vigilante justice. "Mystic River" ends with a patriotic neighborhood parade, all the film's major characters in the crowd. It looks welcoming and friendly, but for one character it's a moment of horror and loss that brings "Mystic River" full circle. In conclusion, a powerful cast and superb direction by Clint Eastwood makes this story of violence and justice an unforgettable one. A DVD must-own when released!
A depressing reunion - should be 4 1/2 stars
Clint Eastwood does a superlative job in directing an extremely fine cast in his gloomy, foreboding portrayal of Dennis Lehane's poignant novel.
Three boyhood friends, Jimmy, Sean and Dave who grew up in a lower middle class Boston neighborhood reunite due to the apparent murder of one of their children. The boys have taken separate and divergent paths since one of them was abducted and molested many years ago. Sean Penn is superb playing Jimmy Markham, a reformed ex-con whose daughter was murdered. The murder investigation is headed by Trooper Sean Devine played by Kevin Bacon and his partner Laurence Fishburn. Tim Robbins does a creditable job in his portrayal of Dave Boyle, a married working stiff tormented by internal demons as a result of his abduction.
Both Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden give convincing performances as Penn and Robbins's respective wives.
In one scene when Penn learns that his daughter is actually the murder victim, he goes off the deep end. This awesome scene is reminiscent of James Cagney going ballistic in White Heat, one of the most classic scenes in cinema history.
The appearance of Eli Wallach, one of the most accomplished character actors of all time, as the liquor store owner was a terrific reunion with Eastwood (not since The Good, The Bad and The Ugly).
Stale As Month-Old Potato Chips
I was quite surprised at how bad this movie was. Perhaps it was just me, but I was looking forward to a Unforgiven-type directoral masterpiece from Mr. Eastwood and the stars Robbins and Penn. Given the hype this movie recieved (and the oscar nods to its 2 main stars and director Eastwood) I was really ready to sink my viewing teeth into something substantial.
Unfortunately, this movie was as stale as a bag of month-old potato chips. I never really came to symphathize at all with Sean Penn's character, even though his daughter was murdered. I mean, seriously, how can you symphathize with a criminal (Penn's character) who barely was involved in his kid's life to begin with?
Perhaps if the movie had shown a more deeper relationship between Penn and the kid then I could have cared more about the outcome. As it was all my sympathy went to Tim Robbins character, sexually molested as a child and then basically forgotten by his so-called "buddies". In my opinion Tim Robbins is the only reason to watch this movie. He walks around with an aire of utter hopelessness (reminiscent of the character he played in Jacob's Ladder), and yet he tries so hard to get passed the mental anguish of his past and make it through each day as an adult that by the end you are cheering for him.
Which brings me to the other reason why this movie stinks - the ending.
Like in a good novel, the reader/viewer doesn't want to be cheated in the end. I don't want to give away the ending, but be warned - it stinks.
All in all there really wasn't any substance to most of the characters, and I found myself toward the end wondering why I should even finish watching it. I like to be absorbed by characters played with heart and substance. Watching these jokers (except for Robbins) was like watching carboard cutouts being moved around on a stage.
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