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Mystic River | Classification: Drama Actors/Actresses: - Emmy Rossum - Sean Penn - Tim Robbins - Kevin Bacon - Laurence Fishburne - Laura Linney A brilliant masterpiece in American filmmaking I just caught the evening matinee show of "Mystic River" at my local movie theater tonight. The complex storyline and gritty cinematography truly is worthy of praise by film critics and moviegoers alike. I haven't read the book yet because I wanted to see the movie first and not ruin the entire movie experience. The three main characters played by Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon were so well written, if not well calculated. All three characters were traumatized and still haunted by the abduction of their best friend Dave. Dave never recovered from his abduction by two slimeballs who passed themselves off as cops. The emotional damage of being molested for four days leaves Dave Boyle permanently damaged emotionally and psychologically. Tim Robbins put in a rich performance as the tormented Dave. Although grown up and was married, he was clearly still haunted by the events of his childhood. Who wouldn't? Marcia Gay Harden put in a wonderful performance as Dave's wife Celeste who believed that Dave was responsible for the murder of Jimmy's eldest daughter from his first marriage. I never really took Kevin Bacon very seriously as an actor however I thought this was the best performance as Sean I have seen from Kevin. Laurence Fishbourne (whom I forgot to mention earlier) was equally wonderful as Sean's partner. I thought his performance was more subtle and lo-key which was fine since the focal point of the movie was around Dave, Sean, and Jimmy. Of all the actors/actresses in the film, I thought Sean Penn put in the most compelling performance as the ex-con Jimmy Marcus whose 19 year old daughter is brutally murdered. When he discovers that the body the cops found was his daughter, I immediately felt the hairs on my arms stand up straight. I never got the chills like that in any movie until now. Sean may be a difficult actor but the performances he puts in truly shines, especially in "Mystic River". As a result of his daughter's death, Jimmy is reunited with his old childhood friends Dave and Sean. The death of Jimmy's daughter quickly unravels and immediately has an explosive effect on the three childhood friends. I would have loved to have seen how the death of Jimmy's daughter effected his other daughters but that might have been a distraction from the story. I loved Laura Linney as Jimmy's wife. Her performance was just as subtle as Laurence Fishbourne which is why I like Laura so much, she doesn't overact like most major Hollywood actresses today. Marcia Gay Harden is wonderful in this film. I hope one or both of the actresses are recognized for their performances in "Mystic River" when Oscars roll around. I immensely enjoyed the twists and turns in the film. There wasn't anything about this movie that I didn't like. The cinematography was excellent. It truly fit the mood of the movie. "Mystic River" certainly ranks as one of, if not the best film of 2003. After seeing the film adaptation, I picked up the book today and I look forward to "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 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. Buy Mystic River at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on Mystic River Search with the Priority Search Engine on Mystic River This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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