An excellent film....

Rating: 9/10 (8 December 2005)

Clint Eastwood indicates that he's much more than a cliché Western actor in his direction of "Mystic River", through the immense skill he exuberates while weaving a poignant and emotional tale of personal redemption, greed, love and the brutal loss of innocence that so consistently plagues society.
As usual, Eastwood's unique directorial ability lies within his insane ability to get the very best out of his performers (typified by the Oscar wins for both Sean Penn and Tim Robbins) and furthermore his simplicity. No emotional scene is over-done with dramatic choir music to effectively tell the audience how they should feel, and instead Eastwood indicates a respect for the audience in that he allows them, in every scene, to make up their own mind as to how they feel. Simple cinematography and simple editing allow Eastwood to merely SHOW us what's going on without relying on the basic clichés of an intense drama that are so enthusiastically used and abused within modern day Hollywood.
The acting, as alluded to in the previous paragraph, is absolutely top notch. Sean Penn is amazing as Jimmy Markum, a man with a hope of personal redemption but who internally struggles following the brutal death of his beloved daughter as he attempts to come to grips with his darker and more menacing side. Tim Robbins is excellent as the emotionally traumatised Dave Boyle, a man who is robbed of his youth following a tragic sexual molestation case. Indeed, Kevin Bacon shines in one of his simpler performances as Sean Devine - a man who works on the apparently "good" side of the law and has to struggle with his professional responsibilities as well as juggling the personal responsibility of an estranged relationship and an unknown child. All of these complex characters, with multi-dimensional sides, are portrayed excellently by the three main cast members and cement all three of them as some of the finer actors within modern Hollywood.
Eastwood's direction possesses an emotional subtlety that is so rare within modern day Hollywood, and furthermore indicates a strong grasp of a complex medium - made all the more harder by the difficult task of bringing such an elusive novel to the firelight in a way that is both refreshing and new whilst simultaneously remaining true to the core and the heart of the initial concepts themselves.
With satisfying editing and cinematography in conjunction with an excellent supporting cast including Laura Linney, Lawrence Fishburne, and Marcia Gay Harden, this film was ALMOST perfect were it not for such a dramatic alteration of directorial style in the final 15-20 minutes of an otherwise flawless picture. When the plot knuckles down to who actually was the perpetrator of the vicious crime, Eastwood seems to forget his responsibility to the audience and merely sit back without any input, overall resulting in a messy final 20 minutes and one that, not only confuses the audience, but only provides a limited resolution to a question that has been so brilliantly alluded to in the first two hours of the film. Clearly, a change of pace was intended and subsequently Eastwood needs to change his directorial style a little bit, however the final twenty minutes seems to merely be a jumble of scenes rather than a flowing text - the way that the first component of the film so brilliantly was.
However, all things considered, this is a beautiful picture that will have you thinking about its major concepts for a long time to come. From its consistent questioning about love, friendship and loss, as well as a technical simplicity that Eastwood creates to allow more empathy and emotional input from the audience, this is a masterpiece above most others and full deserving of its various Oscar nominations and its two victories for the consistent Tim Robbins and the absolutely brilliant Sean Penn.
A practically flawless picture.