Mystic river - The good, the bad and the ugly

Rating: Null/10 (15 November 2003)

This is the story of three boys marked by an awful incident in the sixties. When we meet them grown up 25 years later the developing tragedy is connected to what has happened to one of them and is reflected upon the two others. And it´s sad, sad, sad,...one of the saddest movies I´ve ever seen.
I like Clint Eastwood, as an actor (in the the Italian movies) and as a director (Bird, Unforgiven, Bridges of Madison County and the film of John Huston filming The African Queen). And, since John Huston is my favorite director, I wonder how he would have directed this story - I believe he would have liked this Eastwood version. One of the boys mentioned above, Sean, now a police man, becomes "The Good", investigating the murder of the daughter of his former childhood friend Jimmy ("The Bad", with a criminal past), all leading up to Dave (the third of the childhood friends, prime suspect-"the Ugly", not physically but mentally due to what happened to him.) What strikes me most in this picture is the description of this part of an American city, in this case Boston - very unusual in an American film (not critically) - (I haven´t read the novel which the film is based upon.) What I found most striking in this picture is the acting: Tim Robbins made me cry - he made the most of his complex character. He will stay in my mind for a long time. As for Sean Penn he made the best in the first part of the film, then I think he (or the director) lost control of his character. Kevin Bacon has never been better but he has the least complex character to play. The weak points in this movie are the teenagers fight in the end of the film and Laura Linney(Jimmy´s wife) making Jimmy acceptable (for example the Oscar jury ) and Sean´s and Jimmy´s last talk - could have been better played, better directed. But the last memory of this film staying in mind is when Celeste,Dave´s wife is calling for Michael, their son, in the parade. What will happen to him...I hope he will go unmarked out of this and leave this Mystic River area....