Film Review: Mystic River (2003)

Clint Eastwood as director in past few decades enjoyed great favour among critics. This might be explained with his film giving impression that their author, consciously or unconsciously, tried to distance himself from the iconic image of macho action star and simplistic world view based on violence, vigilante justice and everything that critics associated with the troglodyte right wing mindset. The best known example of this transformation is Eastwood’s Oscar-winning revisionist western Unforgiven. Another example can be found in his 2003 crime drama Mystic River.

The film is based on the eponymous 2001 novel by Dennis Lehane. Plot is set in contemporary Boston. It begins with prologue set in 1975 when three boys from Irish American neighbourhood – James “Jimmy” Markum (played by Jason Kelly), David “Dave” Boyle (played by Cameron Bowen) and Sean Devine (played by Connor Paolo) – are approached by two men claiming to be undercover policemen. Jimmy and Sean escape, but Dave is taken away and appears four days later after surviving rapes and unimaginable abuse. Decades later three boys are still friends but their lives have taken completely different path. Sean (played by Kevin Bacon) became Massachusetts State Police detective, while Jimmy (played by Sean Penn) owns convenience store. Dave (played by Tim Robbins), despite having a job and family, never properly recovered from his ordeal. One night Jimmy’s daughter Katie (played by Emmy Rossum) gets murdered, and on the same night Dave appears at his home bloodied and injured and tells his wife Celeste (played by Marcia Gay Harden) with a tale that he fought off a mugger. Sean investigates Katie’s killing and clues appear that Katie knew her killer. At the same time, Jimmy, unhappy with the pace of investigations, use connections from his own criminal past to conduct investigation of his own, determined to bring his own brand of justice. Since Celeste happens to be cousin of Jimmy’s wife Annabeth (played by Laura Linney) it is only a matter of time before Jimmy connect the dots and exact terrible vengeance on childhood friend.

Eastwood directs film without appearing in front of camera, and it was more than proper decision, since there simply weren’t good enough roles in Brian Helgeland’s script for the actor in his age. If Eastwood was a little bit younger, he could have played at least some of the main trio of characters and at least some of those roles would fit well within his iconic appearances in 1970s westerns, with tightly knit and crime-infested Irish Catholic neighbourhood of Boston with its own views on justice looking very much like the Wild West. Yet Mystic River also functions as conventional crime film, with whodunnit murder mystery working as a basis for powerful drama and excellent set of character studies. Eastwood embraces this conventionality and directs film in simplistic old-fashioned style, which some might see as a reason why Mystic River with its more than two hours of running time seems slightly overlong.

Nevertheless, those two hours are also an excellent opportunity to see Eastwood employ some of the greatest acting talent of its time. Sean Penn is great as father who has been suppressing lifetime of anger and his own criminal past, only to, just like the protagonist of Unforgiven, succumb to them when faced with deep personal loss. Tim Robbins is even more impressive in the role of the man permanently crippled by unimaginable childhood traumas that would ultimately defeat all his efforts of achieve adult normalcy and lead him towards the irrational path that ends in tragedy. Penn delivered another intense performance that would win him Oscar for Best Actor, while Robbins deservedly won Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Those two grand performances have overshadowed almost anyone else, including Kevin Bacon as nominal protagonist. Only two women in cast stand out – Marcia Gay Harden as Dave’s wife whose naivety would inadvertently spark tragedy and Laura Linney who near the end serves as the closest this film has a villain. Mystic River is, like Unforgiven, very dark and depressive film in which bad circumstances and misunderstandings conspire to have the worst possible outcome. Despite that and despite the ending some critics found a little bit too ironic, Mystic River is one of Eastwood’s best films and one of the most powerful Hollywood dramas of early 21st Century.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)

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