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MYSTIC
RIVER Rating:   (out of 5 stars)Director: Clint Eastwood Producers: Robert Lorenz, Judie G. Hoyt Writer: Brian Helgeland (based on Dennis Lehane's novel) Director of Photography: Tom Stern Cast: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Lawrence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew |
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Clint Eastwood's recent movies tend to reflect his persona, brooding and deliberate, which may be why so few critics acknowledge how boring they are. He has turned dull, flat filmmaking into a personal style, so we instead hear that he's great to work for -- such an undemanding boss! It's like we're so glad he's quit the Dirty Harry business that non-repugnant movies come as a relief. Just don't ask me to watch them.
His solid craftsmanship can drain the spark from romance (The Bridges Of Madison County), turn thrillers into routine drama (Absolute Power, True Crime, Blood Work) and leave comedy naked and lifeless (Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, which has the power to stop time itself).
With Mystic River though, he's found the perfect material for his style. This story is brooding -- it's like a brooding meditation on brooding -- and Eastwood tells it with feeling. This is one hell of a movie.
Dennis Lehane's novel is so haunting that it could hardly be improved upon, and it's a credit to screenwriter Brian Helgeland that nothing major has been added or lost. As with L.A. Confidential, he adapts a complex story with style but a complete lack of vanity. Almost every scene, and much if not most of the dialogue, comes directly from the novel. The plot is so filled with emotion, and exposition, that it often seems at risk of bursting at the seams. But the screenplay is tight, and the actors riveting, so the story is just convincing enough to work its magic.
Helgeland borrows Lehane's greatest trick: in a story about fate, coincidence seems only natural. We first meet Jimmy, Sean and Dave as boys in The Flats, a "fictional" Boston-area neighborhood where people have South Boston accents. Playing in the street one day, they're hassled by a pair of guys posing as cops. Dave, the timid one, is ordered into their car, and complies. When Dave returns four days later, having escaped a dungeon of sex abuse, he is -- as a neighborhood father puts it -- "damaged goods."
We meet them again as adults, and it's a mark of how good the actors are that no backstories are necessary. We can see the decades in their body language and eyes. Jimmy (Sean Penn) is an ex-con who runs a convenience store. He is a loving father and the embodiment of suppressed violence. When his 19-year old daughter is killed, his true self comes alive, and he swears vengeance.
Dave (Tim Robbins) becomes the main suspect. On the night of the girl's death, he stunned his wife (Marcia Gay Harden) by coming home with blood-stained clothes and a knife wound. He tells her he fought off a mugger, but tells the cops other stories. Robbins plays Dave as a man defined by his scars. He shuffles along like a ghost, his eyes hollow, his face a cringe. Robbins' height and boyish looks make him all the more poignant. He seems like a guy who wishes he never turned eleven.
The homicide detective is of course Sean (Kevin Bacon), who at first glance seems less traumatized than his former buddies. (For one thing, his hair isn't prematurely graying, so he looks ten years younger.) He's haunted by a living ghost of his own though -- his wife left him for another man just before their first child was born, and she calls him often, saying nothing, leaving him to babble regrets. This is the film's (and the novel's) one clunky subplot, and it doesn't help that Eastwood shows only her mouth, always poised to speak. It seems like a plot device from a far hammier movie.
But then again, all the subplots are broad -- this is a film of giant themes and emotions, stuffed with characters, each with their own histories. In lesser hands it could have been insufferable. Eastwood's triumph is in keeping the drama honest -- his characters seem so real that even when they defy logic to serve the plot, it seems more fatalistic than phony. The elegant score, composed by Eastwood, completes the mood, repeating itself until it feels like a memory, or a dream. His style is as quiet as ever, but Mystic River pulsates with emotion in a way that even Unforgiven (and lots of other directors' great films) never did.
Every character in this film is complex and vivid, and the acting is subtle even when it's spectacular. Robbins, Harden and Linney are devastating -- and then there's Sean Penn, who takes the ultimate Sean Penn role and transcends acting. I don't know how to describe what he does here. His Jimmy seems more than human -- he's a twisted, wounded animal, with more love and anger than he can stand. He is a force of nature, and Mystic River is unforgettable.
(A Warner Bros. release. Opened in
limited release on October 8, 2003. Expands to a wide release
on October 15, 2003.)
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