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Mystic River - Special 3-Disc Edition Customer Reviews (73 - 75 of 82 Reviews)

The past has no hold on the future . . . . not.
Erwin Rommel was supposed to have made a similar comment to one of his Lieutenants while he was preparing the defenses at Normandy in April of 1944. Of course we know this is not true. It wasn't true for General Rommel any more so than it was or Sean, Jimmy and Davey when at about the age of 12, Davey is kidnapped by 2 pedophiles off the apartment bordered avenue where the three friends are playing 'street hockey' where they lived in south Boston.

There's a remarkable scene at the end of the movie when Sean Devine, a State Police Detective, asks Jimmy Markham if he's seen Davey? Jimmy turns to Sean and says "I haven't seen Davey for 25 years, since he disappeared in that car."

This is a dark movie from a dark book by Dennis Lehane of the Patrick and Angie series. The book was a painful look at people, for the most part normal people or at least people we are familiar with, traumatized by an event so miniscule that it nearly goes unreported with no room on the agenda of the Rathers and the Brokaws, but sufficient enough to last a lifetime for the three boy-men.

In the middle of the movie Sean Penn, who is brilliant, explains how he got together wth the mother of his now murdered daughter, Katie. The mother was apparently well above the social strata of the then 19 year old Jimmy. Penn says, "I get into that car when we're kids, I'd never have the juice to ask her out."

Clint Eastwood does an extraordinary job just following the book. It is scary and haunting with wounded has beens acting heroic and heroes making awful mistakes. Everyone knows their part, Laurence Fisburne as Kevin Bacon''s Sergeant is excellent, Tim Robbins as the adult Dave Boyle's superior performance nearly won him a best supporting; and Sean Penn is positively the best I've ever seen.

The endings remain the same; perhaps there is more to the final scenes in the book as Lehane wrote it, yet Eastwood does a remarkable job in juxtaposing one scene against another. I would be astonished if after 10 years, this didn't still rank as one of the best movies of the decade. A great, haunting, disturbing, memorable, critically acclaimed movie. Larry Scantlebury. 5 stars.

Your Father's Sins
The Mystic River near downtown Boston is a repository of many secrets, many unfulfilled dreams and an untold number of heartaches and repudiations. It is the place where young people go to neck, where college kids go to smoke dope and drink beer and where despondent adults go to do away with themselves. It is in the Mystic River area that Clint Eastwood has chosen to play out his story of sin, treachery, death, deceit, revenge and murder.
In many ways this film has close social ties to the Godfather movies: it is a world in which Family protects it's own and doesn't go outside the bounds of the family to right a wrong, a world in which the Police are avoided and certainly not trusted. In this case these people don't have the clout of the Corleones but they certainly have more than their share of familial pride and loyalty.
Jimmy and Annabeth Markum (Sean Penn and Laura Linney), Dave and Celeste Boyle (Tim Robbins and Marcia Gay Harden) and Sean (Kevin Bacon): all from solid, Irish immigrant families, all friends from childhood, all estranged for years as the movie begins, make up the central characters of this story.
The penultimate event, the event that colors the entire film comes in the first 15 minutes as Dave as a young man, is abducted by two men posing as policeman, who hide him away, lock him up and repeatedly abuse him. It is the most harrowing, disturbing 15 minutes of film in recent memory.
Sean Penn seems to be getting all the good reviews for his work here and his performance is heartbreaking yet bold and strong: a man dealing with life as best as he can and in the only way that he can. But I think it is Tim Robbins' performance as Dave Boyle, a man haunted and laid to waste by his past, who does the best work. Robbins' Boyle is physically, socially and mentally impaired yet he manages to remind us over and over again throughout the film that there is a real man underneath all that psychological baggage.
Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden play diametrically opposed characters: Linney as Annabeth is strong, proud to be married to Jimmy and relishes his, and by nature of her being his wife, her power. The last scene between these two is both boldly and shamelessly sexual and it recalls the early scenes between Desdemona and Othello in "Othello." Harden as Celeste is weak, shamed by her husband Dave and even she finds consolation in confessing secrets to Jimmy.
"Mystic River" simultaneously works on two levels: as a police thriller and as a social and psychological case study of how the past can never be shaken, how the past is always sending out knives that re-open wounds in our present lives. It's about the sins of the fathers visiting themselves upon the sons. It's an ancient story that Eastwood has made vital , compassionate , human and contemporary.

Dark "River" is an amazing film!
Mystic River is an amazing achievement in filmaking by director Clint Eastwood and its amazing cast. The film revolves around three childhod friends(Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon) and two horrible incidents, one in their childhood and one in their adulthood, that forever link them and change them. Sean Penn gives an excellent performance, best of his career, as an ex-con whose daughter dies at the beginning of the film. The scene where he realizes his daughter is dead is amazing and heartwrenching. Tim Robbins also gives a career best performance as a man trapped in a past he can't forget and his performance is the most haunting of the three main complex characters. Kevin Bacon is a homicide detective and does a great job showing the pain his character feels over his wife leaving him and his inability to communicate and share his feelings make his charcter very interesting. Bacon also delivers a career best performance. Laurence Fishburne also does a great job as Bacon's partner, a man who wants to solve the murder and feels like Bacon's character is too close to the case. Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden also have excellent performances as the wives of Penn and Robbins, and they both will be nominated at Oscar time. Clint Eastwood does an amazing job as director, with the deliberately slow pace and dark settings.This film will be one of the five films up for best picture at the end of the year and it should be. What an amazing film!

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