Disturbing message

Rating: 6/10 (13 July 2004)

Mystic river was a moody, well acted film which deserves much of the praise it receives, but one major point doesn't sit well with me.
(spoilers below) I liked the slower pacing of the film as it seemed necessary to properly develop all of the main characters. I felt I could really sympathize with Dave, Jimmy and Sean, and their actions seemed believable.
There was some implausibility in the movie; namely the extreme coincidence of Dave happening to murder a child molester shortly after running into Jimmy's daughter who herself is murdered that same night. But, I suppose some plot device was needed to shift suspicion to Dave.
My main gripe with the film is the ending and its implied message. After Jimmy realizes he has killed an innocent man (of his daughter's murder at least), he is disturbed, and rightly so. However, the film seems to want to justify his actions, highlighted by his wife's speech in which she more or less condones what he did since he was trying to do right by his family. Even his friend, Sean the police detective, seems to accept Jimmy's murderous behavior as OK: hey, Dave was screwed up anyway because of his history with sexual abuse, after all.
I don't mind films that end unhappily. I can walk away from them and appreciate the characters' flaws and reflect on their mistakes. But this film seems to want to convince me that murder is OK as long as you meant to kill someone who wronged you, and that some lives aren't really worth that much anyway. And that is a little disturbing.
6 out of 10