Eastwood's 24th directorial effort is one of his finest- the cast is entirely stellar

Rating: 10/10 (17 October 2003)

Mystic River is, in it's story, a mystery, but the characters that consist of it bring it to the level of a truly effective, touching tragedy. It's rare in a movie-going experience that I expect to feel immediate or emotional with what the characters go through, and the path(s) the story takes them. But something about the effect of the performances made me feel completely immersed in it, and by the end I was trembling.
The murder-mystery elements in the story keep the viewer interested, however it's the dramatic elements in the storytelling and how the psychology of each character, major or supporting, is revealed that the film gains it's momentum. Each small or important emotion is played as it would in real life, and every player knows the pains that lie in their characters psyches. Penn's violent, torn Jimmy is one of his finest works in years; Bacon is better-than-usual in a role that requires his sorrow to be mostly buried; Laura Linney and Marcia Gay-Harden as Penn and Robbins' wives each hold their own unique talents. And then there's Robbins, who finds the perfect notes in Dave- the viewer is never too sure what he saw or did that late-night of Katie is murder was real because there's ghosts that perpetually cloud his mind. It's a very complex person, and since Robbins conveys him with just the right anguish, just the right subtly, that it may be one of his very best performances of his career.
That such a cast could pull it off, from the script by Brian Hegeland and the direction by Clint Eastwood, is a testament to how skilled they can be. Eastwood is worthy of very high praise here, because he has to be the one to weave it all together. In his actors he knows what to get out of them, that they are far more important for the story than the actually mechanics of the story itself. By allowing the characters to give us a view of their world, we get involved more and more into the story. In a sense this gives Eastwood a chance to explore similar territory he did in Unforgiven, and overall it's just as compelling (though in a different genre). One of the best films of the year: A+