MYSTIC RIVER (2003)
Warner Bros.

By Désirée I. Guzzetta

Mystic River is film where great acting and mostly assured directing nearly overcome a flawed script to make a fantastic movie. Nearly. As it is, it's very, very good, but it could have been spectacular if director Clint Eastwood had toned down some of screenwriter Brian Helgeland's ham-fisted symbolism.

We first meet the three main characters, Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn), Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), and Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) as children playing in the streets of their Boston suburb. Some fresh cement proves too much temptation to resist for Jimmy and Sean, who bully the weaker-willed Dave into joining them in writing their names. The vandalism is interrupted by two pedophiles posing as cops--one is wearing a cross and a religious ring, for one example of the ham-fisted symbolism--who manage to scare Dave into getting into their car. Dave is raped for four days before managing to escape.

Cut to 25 years later. Jimmy is an ex-con who now runs a neighborhood market; Sean is a homicide detective whose wife has left him; and, Dave is a shell of a man whose tremulous wife, Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden in another Oscar-worthy portrayal), and young son are barely enough reason for him to hold it together. Interestingly, Dave sees himself as an incomplete person, echoing the fact that he never did get to finish writing his name in the cement that terrible day.

Their lives intersect again when one of Jimmy's daughters, vivacious 19-year-old Katie (Emmy Rossum, who lights up the screen in her brief role), is murdered the same night Dave comes home hurt and bloodied. The bulk of the film is taken up with Sean and his partner, Whitey Powers (the ever-brilliant Laurence Fishburne) trying to figure out what happened to Katie before Jimmy and his friends in order to prevent further tragedy.

One of the things I really liked about this film was how the plot became increasingly complicated as the story moved along. Details about Jimmy's life as an ex-con dribble out as Powers discovers them, giving Penn time to unveil Jimmy's many layers. The more we learn about Jimmy's past, the more we begin to understand what drives him and why he hates Katie's secret boyfriend.

There are also some nice juxtapositions that manage to make a point without hammering the audience over the head; for example, there's a shot of Dave getting into a car with a couple of Jimmy's friends known as the Savage Brothers (Kevin Chapman and Adam Nelson) that painfully parallels the young Dave in the backseat of the pedophiles' car. The latter is achieved only in the audience's memory; no immediate on-screen flashback is necessary.

Mystic River's powerful tale of grief and revenge is somewhat undermined, however, by screenplay weaknesses and the aforementioned ham-fisted symbolism, the main ones being in scenes I cannot discuss without thoroughly spoiling the movie. A couple of weaknesses I can mention, however, include the subplot with Sean's wife, which plays (perhaps inadvertently?) like a red herring in the murder plot, but is mostly an annoying stoppage of the main action and doesn't add much to rounding out Sean's personality. I also didn't fully buy the friendship between the three men, mostly because the childhood scenes are so fleeting, which also makes Jimmy and Sean's talk of "what ifs" about the day Dave was kidnapped ring false.

Again, though, what makes the film worth seeking out is the stellar acting by all involved. Penn is very effective in showing us both Jimmy's anguish and how easily it makes him revert to his ex-con ways. Bacon gives a controlled, nuanced performance, as Sean comes to grips with his own role in Dave's becoming "damaged goods." But it is Robbins as the nervous, tortured Dave that gives the film its emotional heft and elicits the most sympathy. Robbins plays Dave as a man on the verge of disappearing completely into his own haunted memories and his breakdown is compelling, albeit disquieting, to watch.

Fishburne imbues Powers with sensibility and doggedness, and both Harden and Linney make the most of what little time they appear in the film--women don't really exist in the world of Mystic River except as victims and/or enablers--with Harden particularly heartbreaking as a timid woman who loves her husband but also fears he may be capable of murder. Linney has a strong scene at the end that, despite being well-acted, seems to come out of left field, given that we've not been shown enough to make her Lady MacAnnabeth speech believable. I'm all for morally ambiguous characters, but give me a basis for it first.

Even so, Mystic River does make a deep impression and is one of the few "must see" films this year. A film doesn't have to be perfect to be good, after all, and this film, as I said, is very, very good. Expect to hear a lot more about it come Oscar nomination time, and deservedly so.

Official site: http://mysticrivermovie.warnerbros.com/index.php

Warner Bros.
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Brian Helgeland (based on the novel by Dennis Lehane)
Starring: Sean Penn (Jimmy Markum), Tim Robbins (Dave Boyle), Kevin Bacon (Sean Devine), Laurence Fishburne (Whitey Powers), Marcia Gay Harden (Celeste Boyle), Laura Linney (Annabeth Markum)
Running Time: 2 hours, 20 minutes
Rated: R

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