Movie Review:

Mystic River

    Mystic River, the latest film from Clint Eastwood, is an example of what is generally called “elevating the material.”  The story is pretty rote – a simple whodunit with a couple blind alleys thrown into the mix – and the “catch” is not exactly mind-blowing.  The father of the murdered girl, the detective, and the prime suspect were all friends as kids.  Whoa, slow down!

   Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn), Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), and Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) were friends back in the early 70s when a couple of men pretending to be cops forced Dave into their car.  They held him for four days before he finally escaped, and he hasn’t been the same since.  We know this because the story is told both by the adult Sean and in an infuriatingly didactic sequence at the beginning of the film, clips from which are inserted into scenes in which the adult Dave gets a spacey look and then shakes his head distractedly.  Eastwood might as well have the actors hold up signs that say “remember this part” as they talk.

    That’s the first problem with Mystic River – even as a pretty conventional plot unfolds, Eastwood’s direction is heavy-handed, leading the viewer along as though the target audience was four-year-olds.  Overly-expository dialogue and slow zooms in on troubled faces make sure the audience sees what Eastwood feels it needs to see, as though following the plot would really be a difficult ordeal without the signposts.

    In what comes as a great relief, though, Eastwood eases up after the first half hour or so and actually lets the film run its course.  Rather than dictating exactly what to follow, he lets the actors and Brian Helgeland’s script do the talking, only stepping in to add atmosphere and to ratchet up the tension in the film’s final act.  The cuts back and forth between two confrontations that both have to do with Jimmy’s daughter’s death are nothing less than masterworks of editing, switching between the two scenes at exactly the right moments.

    Letting the actors have their way is a good idea, because the cast is top-shelf.  Penn, Bacon, and Robbins are all superb, as are Laurence Fishburne and Marcia Gay Harden as Bacon’s partner and Robbins’ wife.  Eastwood doesn’t need to be obvious when he’s got actors of this caliber, who are capable of conveying the emotion of a scene on their faces and through body language.  Along with Helgeland’s dialogue, they keep the fairly simple plot chugging for 137 minutes that manage not to drag.

    But just when you thought Mystic River had saved itself after a rough start, there is a second, more major problem.  While the film pulls itself together technically, it is never quite clear where its moral compass is centered, and in the final act the arrow flies totally out of control.  It’s difficult to really discuss this without totally giving the ending away, but I’ll make an effort.

    Laura Linney (playing Jimmy’s wife Annabeth) has a speech at the end of the film that is so wildly inappropriate from a moral standpoint that the film seems to be daring the audience to believe that it’s endorsing her words.  Annabeth’s logic is that nothing a person does is wrong as long as their motivation is legitimate, a repulsive response to the action in the film’s final half hour.  Jimmy is let off the hook both by Annabeth and, more disturbingly, by Sean, who seems only too happy to ignore Jimmy’s unspoken but obvious transgression.  The “love is all you need, and who cares about death” finale is one of the most sickening things that has ever attempted to pass for insight in Hollywood.  (One alternative explanation is that the film is actually holding Annabeth up for disdain.  I didn't find the circunstantial evidence to substantiate this idea, however.)

   Technically speaking and from an acting standpoint, Mystic River is probably about as solid a film as there will be all year.  The message it backs, however, is the wrong one.  The film seems to want to ask questions, but the only answer it bothers to reveal is that actions don't have consequences as long as you're a tough guy.  B-

Mystic River is a Warner Brothers release.  Rated for violence and language.