Mystic River
Winner of 2 Academy Awards: Best Actor - Sean Penn, Best Supporting Actor - Tim Robbins
Jimmy. Dave. Sean. Friends who grew up in working-class Boston, they drift apart after a terrible tragedy. Years later, brutal events reconnect them. Jimmy's 19-year-old daughter is coldly murdered. Dave is a suspect. And Sean, now a cop, scrambles to solve the crime before volatile Jimmy takes the law into his own hands.
Working from Brian Helgeland's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel, director Clint Eastwood shapes a masterwork, a brooding thriller built on family, friends and innocence lost. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon play the pivotal threesome, joining Lawrence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney in one of the most powerful casts ever. The river has many depths. Let it wash over you.
Member Reviews
8/10 - kanachien
This movie was as Oscar-ready as they come: self-consciously dramatic, full of pop-psychology and conventional plot developments, the kinds of performances that make for good bytes on the big Oscar screen as they show the nominees. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't stand-out. Several years from now it will have been forgotten. Sean Penn did far better work in _21 Grams_, which is a much more disturbing film because of its moral ambivalence. A good dramatic flick; I'm not surprised it won Oscars, but it didn't blow me awayA Very Heavy, Dark Movie - revsdd
"Mystic River" begins with the abduction and sexual assault of a young boy, and that sets the stage for the whole movie. No, this is not light, fluffy entertainment. This is a dark, heavy and tragic story about how a horrible event affects 3 lives. When Dave was abducted, he was with two friends, but it was Dave who was taken. The movie then picks up years later, when the lives of all three begin to come together again after the daughter of one of the three is murdered. Dave was played by Tim Robbins, who I thought was very convincing as a man tormented by his past. Jimmy, who comes across as something of a gangster-type who decides to seek his own revenge against his daughter's killerthe father of the murdered girl, was also well played by Sean Penn. The most disappointing performance (perhaps because he was playing the least interesting character) was from Kevin Bacon as Sean, who has become a police detective and is hunting down the murderer.
The story unfolds slowly but is interesting throughout. The suggestion throughout is that Dave is the murderer, but right away that seemed too easy and obvious to me. That suspicion led to ultimately tragic results at the end of the movie that were at least the equal of the tragic beginning of the movie. Good use was made of locations, which added a realistic feel to the movie throughout. The strange relationship between Sean and his ex-wife, who would repeatedly phone him and then not speak, struck me as a little bit silly and I thought detracted from the story. In the end, I also wasn't sure how I should feel about what had happened. On the one hand, you have to feel sympathy for Jimmy, who has to come to terms with his daughter's murder, but there's also a sense that this guy needs to face some consequences for what he's done, and there's no indication that he will. So I was left with mixed emotions.
Certainly, a good movie - but, as I said, a very heavy movie.Sean Penn films are almost too excruciating. - Yogini
The cast is superb. The direction is superb. The story is heart-breaking and scary. Either of the two major traumas portrayed in the film could happen to every one of us: the abducted child; the dead child, but the part I found most subtly disturbing was the way the two wives are somehow culpable: One wife sells her husband short, and, in effect, murders him; the other wife is a regular Lady MacBeth in modern dress, and destroys her husband's immortal soul. Does the book portray these women as playing god? Or is it the director?
Member Reviews
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8/10 - kanachien
This movie was as Oscar-ready as they come: self-consciously dramatic, full of pop-psychology and conventional plot developments, the kinds of performances that make for good bytes on the big Oscar screen as they show the nominees. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't ...A Very Heavy, Dark Movie - revsdd
"Mystic River" begins with the abduction and sexual assault of a young boy, and that sets the stage for the whole movie. No, this is not light, fluffy entertainment. This is a dark, heavy and tragic story about how a horrible event affects 3 lives. When Dave ...Sean Penn films are almost too excruciating. - Yogini
The cast is superb. The direction is superb. The story is heart-breaking and scary. Either of the two major traumas portrayed in the film could happen to every one of us: the abducted child; the dead child, but the part I found most subtly disturbing was ...