Great film, awful movie.

Rating: 1/10 (7 August 2004)

***SPOILERS*** If you haven't seen the movie please skip this comment ***SPOILERS***
Mystic River is at once a beautiful thing to see, but a horrible thing to think about. I truly enjoy these psychological drama mysteries, and a little whodunnit goes a long way with me. However, despite this films' beautiful scenery and camera work, the overall effect was wasted by one of the most empty stories stuffed with over-acting and pointless symbolism I've ever had the misfortune to be abused by.
First of all, the film tries to evoke the power of the river - mystic, references to washing clean, sins, penitence - yet the river itself plays nary a cameo in the overall story. It's kind of somewhere nearby, and maybe we use it to hide a body once in awhile.
Next, the whodunnit. It's obviously not Dave Boyle. I could almost hear the storyteller whispering "ignore the characters' viewpoint, look at what I'm *not* telling you". Boyle's wife starts suspecting him immediately, apparently with no real reason other than it just might have happened, yet we have no precursive reference upon which to base an agreement with her conclusion, so she comes off as weak-minded, also a trait we have not had defined for us in our brief let's-meet-the-characters-grown-up teaser sequences. There's a weak, vague leap from Dave as molestee to Dave as murderer, but why kill Katie?
At exactly 61 minutes I happened to pause the DVD for a coffee break and remarked that it seemed obvious that Jimmy was going to kill Dave and then find out Dave didn't do it. Which is a great tragedy, and had it happened 62 minutes into the film I might have enjoyed the drama that could unfold following such a horrific moment in Jimmy's personal life and the effect his mistake would have on the relatively interwoven community, but instead we're treated to yet another contrived suspense thriller where the wrong guy gets it just as the real bad guy is unmasked. Yeh, I haven't seen that before. Even worse, as it turns out, we can't even feel sorry for Dave as the wrong guy because even though he didn't kill Katie, he's becoming a likely candidate for serial killer of the month, getting his first kill in, coincidentally enough, the night his friends' daughter gets killed.
The premise is ridiculously fantastical, the plot is full of holes, this tragedy is a comedy of errors.
After jumping from guesses that included the Savage brothers, the Harris widow and for a few minutes, Sean himself, the 911 tape gave us the answer. Something about the whispering screamed "mute brother". We'd already been treated to the 911 call at the start of the film, and there's an obvious weirdness to the "they want a name", "they want our name", "they want her name" business.
***
So, if we the audience are supposed to receive this movie as a psychological exploration for which the story is not that important, maybe we can salvage some value. Maybe the plot is not so important; the premise contrived merely to allow the various psyches to unfurl before us for our perusal and dissection. Yet the movie is inundated with apparent stupidity and weird leaps of unexplained behaviour, denying us the intellectual stimulation it could have so easily given us.
1. If I can guess Sean is sending the money to the Harris widow, why can't two ostensibly adequate homicide detectives?
2. Celeste Boyle who has been married to Dave for quite some time can't notice her husband having some kind of breakdown? She can't talk to her husband, but she can run down the street and confess her beliefs to Jimmy like some bad scene from a thankfully-never-made Mafia movie?
3. Sean's wife. I'm struggling to explain why she's even in there, maybe the trinity needed balance, maybe someone thought we the audience didn't want Sean left out of having a crappy life so here's some drama. And what's with the mouth? Am I supposed to see her as Sean now sees her, as only a voice, no substantiality? Could work in another movie, but in a whodunnit it simply immediately casts suspicion on the character for which we hover between indecision until finally Sean picks up a photo of the departed wife so we can breathe a little easier, knowing it's not one of the already on screen women and furthermore, she's not the killer because she looks so damn cute in the picture. I can imagine the meeting after the test audience overwhelmingly decided it was her. "Hmm, how about we throw a photo in and she looks all beautiful and innocent and Sean looks happy and hey, we trust him so she must be innocent".
4. Jimmy has what exactly to base his decision to execute his childhood friend? That's right. NOTHING. Dave was in the bar everyone normally goes to. Dave came home bloody. Kill Dave. Sure, if they had some kind of history of dislike, or even no history at all, I could buy it, but they were childhood buddies. I'd need a little more myself.
5. Dave has guilt over killing the wrong guy for about four and a half hours. Then he bangs his wife after she does some weird you're-the-king-and-you-can-kill-whoever-you-want-to speech, which is in and of itself ridiculous and completely out of character for her.
6. Sean as trustworthy: "he's not my friend", that's what we get given to allow us to consider Sean as the font of all truth, wisdom and impartiality. Anyone catching on to this who has not yet realized Dave is innocent of Katie's murder can now rest assured because Sean sure as hell doesn't think so, and not because he's Dave's friend or anything.
7. Dave being driven away twice. Just how sorry are we supposed to be for him? What are we supposed to draw from his second "abduction", even down to the hand coming over the seat when the passenger turns around. And that first time in the car... was that a cross on the guy's ring? Surely that's not a priest? In Boston? Molesting boys? Wow, who'd a thunk it?
8. The two who didn't get in the car. Feel guilt. Don't feel guilt. Feel guilt again. Don't feel guilt. Feel a little teensy bit of guilt.
9. Dave. Stick to a story. Was it the door or was it the kitchen sink? Both exclude the fake un-back-up-able mugger, why make up a new one for the cops? You already told Jimmy you jammed it in a door. Who would move from that story? Not including Dave, no-one.
***
So maybe we can forget all that and watch the anachronisms, the out of character-ness they display as this second trauma impacts these three, drawing them all back together. Maybe. Unfortunately, we know so damned little about them, we don't even know what to think past the typecasting.
Come on! Develop these characters before having them do uncharacteristic things. At least then we'd have a better sense of who's acting out of whack.
Is Jimmy acting out of character whacking friends? Apparently not, he's done it before. If he was out of character maybe we could sympathize with his relentless need to kill someone, anyone, even on not too great a corpus of evidence, but the jail-time, the tattoos, the "is that my daughter in there" screaming... no, Jimmy's doing what Jimmy would always do.
Is Dave out of character being all moody and weird? Nope, he's like that from the minute we meet him. He's obviously spiralling near something bad, but was it really triggered by randomly walking past the drainhole and cement? Or has he been getting worse every day since the escape? We sure as hell don't know.
Does Sean even have character? Hardly.
Then the wives.
Jimmy's wife completely crazies out in the ending, including the afore-mentioned weird support pep-talk plus the oddball side glances she gives Dave's wife in the last scene. Dave's wife? We have no idea. Maybe she's always thought Dave was a little weird and now finally he's gone and done something she can blab about. Sean's wife? Who the hell knows?
***
If there's a lesson in this film with all the happy endings and weird look-at-them-all-being-completely-normal-despite-the-most-insanely-messed-up-day-they-all-had-yesterday imagery, I didn't get it.
Eastwood took an amazingly poor story and made a beautiful film. Kudos. I highly recommend seeing this film, just so you can experience the same sweet and sour brain damage I suffered watching this overlong madness.