RSS 2.0Mystic River (2003)
With over 4 months to go Oscar-season has started in Hollywood. One of the titles mentioned with recurring frequency is Mystic River, starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins and directed by Clint Eastwood. These rumors only increased my curiosity and expectations, so I went to see Mystic River on the day it was released here in the Netherlands. It is not a good thing to go see a movie with such anticipation and my visit to Eastwood’s next installment could only end in disappointment. And it did.
Mystic River takes place in suburbian Boston where we find three friends who struggle to escape from the social vacuum they find themselves in. Only one of them, Sean (played by Bacon) has found himself a career, as a crime investigator. The other two, Jimmy and Dave (Penn and Robbins) live nextdoor and have difficulty fitting into society. Jimmy is an ex-convict, jailed for a crime he didn’t commit and Dave is traumatized by a childhood experience in which he was abducted, sexually molested and imprisoned for four days in the woods. This event has left deep scars on all three men and their friendship. After Jimmy’s daughter is brutally murdered, Sean starts to investigate the case, although Jimmy is doing his own private investigations determined to find the person responsible for the death of his daughter.
The movie has a promising start with the scene in which we see the three men as young boys, with one of them (Dave) being taken away by two men who pretend to be policemen. Eastwood only subsequently portrays the shocking events that take place briefly with very suggestive, but not shocking, images. This makes you want to find out exactly what took place in those woods and even more how it has affected the lives of the three men. This question keeps dominating the movie and it soon becomes clear that this movie is not just a simple matter of ‘who-dunnit’ but tries to provide answers to the exact weight of the tragic events that has separated the three friends. The acting performances (especially Penn’s) are of a very high quality, but afterwards I found myself standing outside the movie theater, still not knowing what exactly happened in the boys’ childhood years. Maybe I am a spoilt moviegoer, but if a movie is promising to give me answers – I want those answers. They don’t all have to be spelled out, but a better explanation would have been desirable. The only realistic reference there is to Dave’s childhood experience is when he tells his wife about it (who didn’t know for all the years she’s been with him) and a few mentions of the event throughout the movie.
Mystic River desperately tries to fight its way out of being an ordinary crime movie but the final outcome of who killed Jimmy’s daughter is ridiculous and simply not believable. However, Eastwood is a good director and maybe the flaw lies within the screenplay or the original novel. I expect Penn to get his Oscar nomination, but I have seen similar dramas of much better quality, like In The Bedroom. To close this review with something positive: the directing is solid and so is the setting of the Boston suburbs. It’s just that it takes a little bit more than mere solidity to impress.
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne
Official Website
Mystic River runs 137 minutes and is now showing
Arjan Welles (213 posts)Arjan Welles - law graduate. I work at a bank, I work as a film critic for Dutch and English media. My favorite directors are David Lynch, David Fincher, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino. I love arthouse over blockbusters.
10 Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
“In the Bedroom” was BETTER? I thought it was slow and fairly dissapointing.
Wow, well now you have lowered my similarly high expectations about seeing this movie.
Comment by marisa — Fri October 31, 2003 @ 17:34Oh you just have to go see it for yourself! I read very positive reviews also… it was just not my movie…
Comment by Arjan — Fri October 31, 2003 @ 18:10At least it’s not ‘Bridges of Madison Country’
No, I’ll go see it for sure. The cast alone is interesting enough.
Comment by reisneus — Sat November 1, 2003 @ 10:44Dear, dear Arjan. I saw the flick and it was the most involved I had been with a movie in a long time. By the way, I picked the killer but changed my mind twice and my mate beat me to it. People rave about Penn but what struck me was the job that Robbins did as the haunted victim of an abuse we can hardly imagine. His last scene with Penn is beautifully staged and the discomfort you experience is almost too much to bear. There are no winners in this movie and finally you have to admit that some evils are just too devastating not to leave a legacy — almost a fate — that this move courageously chronicles. You will eventually thank your lucky stars not only that you have been spared such a fate but that you were able to witness, from a distance, what happens to people not as lucky. It was brilliant.
Comment by John — Sun November 2, 2003 @ 3:31I can see the good sides and the acting performances, but the screenplay wasn’t that fabulous to my opinion…
Comment by arjan — Sun November 2, 2003 @ 16:50Spoilers Included:
I agree with Arjan — the reason the “real killers” had for chasing the girl and shooting her and beating her to death was idioptic and ridiculous — they shot her and beat her violently so she wouldnt tell on them that they were playing with a gun? Stupid.
And the fact that one of em just happened to be the brother of a young man who was engaged to the girl was a laucghable and ridiculous coincidence. Ditto the laughably implausible coincidence that the gun was the same gun used by their father 20 years earlier, and that their father was the old running mate of Sean Penn, who just happened to plug their dad. And the killing was an accident, with all of those coincidences? That’s just plain bad writing
Beyond that, I also found it ridiculous that Kevin Bacon would not arrest Sean Penn for killing Tim Robbins — and why would Robbins falsely confess, and make up such an elaborate reason for commiting the murder that, it turns out, he really didnt commit?
Finally, what was that speech by laura Linnery about at the end? Somehow it was implied that she had something to do with setting Robbins up to be whacked by Penn — but it is so cryptic and mumbled that we cant make head nor tail out of it
What a dissappointment, at least in terms of the screenplay. I did think the performances were all strong, and the film had a nice melancholy look to it, but the writing and directing were just inept
Comment by kevin — Sun June 20, 2004 @ 8:57I agree with the coincidences rendering the story a bit frostbitten, but I was more focussing on the mutual relationship between the three old friends. The quote that they might have all been in the car that day revealed that it was an event that shook their lives up completely. However, what really happened to each one of them didn’t become very clear.
The most disturbing part was the strange situation Kevin bacon’s character found himself in, with his wife running away. That still isn’t clear to me. Also the reaction of Robbins’ wife was a bit strange; he might have hidden his childhood trauma form him, but it shouldn’t have escaped her attention that he was not what you’d call ‘a normal guy’.
The relation between Penn’s character and his daughter didn’t seem that bad, but still she wanted to get away from him (only because he didn’t like her boyfriend?). So all in all a lot of vagueness. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the great acting.
Comment by Paco — Sat July 17, 2004 @ 21:40***SPOILERS***
I loathe Clint Eastwood on the whole, both as an actor and a director, but keep giving him a chance for some reason. This wasn’t half as bad as some other Eastwood productions (“Unforgiven” – blech!) but I agree that there were plot holes galore and an unsatisfying ending.
John, the end of your review insinuates that we should be so happy that we were spared Dave’s fate that there’s no room to criticize this film. I think you’re confusing celluloid with real life a little too much there.
Arjan, are you sure Jimmy was convicted for a crime he didn’t commit? I thought he commited a robbery? He is certainly not the good guy in this story. But he (Sean Penn) did give the best performance.
Laura Linney’s speech was indeed rather confusing: “You could be the king of this town if you wanted”. What was that about? Opening up for a sequel: “Jimmy, Godfather of Boston”?
All in all, it was intriguing for the most part, but the intrigue makes you expect clarification at the end. Alas: too many implausible coincidences and the ending was one of those that seems to say “We didn’t really have an ending, so let’s leave it with so many loose ends that the audience is compelled to think that THEY are not clever enough to understand it.” Typical Eastwood.
Comment by suzero — Sun December 19, 2004 @ 13:46Maybe I have to see this one again, but I think it was highly overrated at the Oscars.
What makes this film outstanding are the acting performances of both Penn and Robins and their Oscars were very much deserved. The thing is, however, as a viewer I wanted to be informed about the past of the boys, which is the opening of the film and to my surprise it wasn’t spun out to the fullest to give the movie a satisfying ending…
The story shifts too much from a childhood/pedophilia drama to a who-dunnit, because the outcome of who killed Penn’s daughter doesn’t add much to the story. I wanted to see more focus on the past of the boys, how it effected their friendship, how they have grown apart and how it effects their contact with their loved ones and family. On that field it was not satisfying at all, on the acting field it is a true gem.
Comment by arjan — Sun December 19, 2004 @ 14:48Not a bad film, all in all,
Comment by baligeko — Tue August 19, 2008 @ 14:40but it keeps on wandering on about 10 minutes
after the real finishing scene.