Not your average "Usual Suspects" thriller...

Rating: 8/10 (8 November 2003)

Most of the negative comments on this movie on IMDb that I've seen were from the people that... went to the wrong movie! Not in the sense that they'd seen something other than "Mystic River", not at all. It's just that "Mystic River" was not the kind of movie they expected to see, and probably not the sort of movies they usually enjoy watching...
"Mystic River" is not a "who-done-it" thriller where you're biting your nails all the way till the last frames when the true killer is revealed. The "who-done-it" type of plot is merely a "delivery vehicle" in this case, just a way of slapping a number of character types together in a situation which might (and does!) reveal something about them. And for THAT purpose it worked fairly well - mission accomplished, Clint.
[WARNING : POSSIBLE MILD SPOILERS AHEAD!] It's a movie about "regular" people. The kind of folks that live next door. And just like the people that live next door to you MIGHT HAVE, some of these folks HAVE some skeletons in their closets. Some others turn out to act in a less than intelligent way when being put under pressure. Yet others demonstrate how sometimes morals can indeed be bent or thrown out altogether when one's loved ones well-being is at stake...
It doesn't really matters who butchered Katie (Rossum), not in this movie. What matters is how each of the characters that got dragged into the twister of ensuing events went through that particular mess, and how they went through other tight spots in their past that the audience is being made aware of.
It's a movie about what passion can do to a man. It's a movie about how love can make one to accept the unacceptable, how old friendships can make people turn a blind eye on some things(*), and how unbelievably cruel children can be at times. It's also a movie about how pressure can crack those weak at heart and make them betray their family.
In a word, this is not your average "The Usual Suspects" thriller. It's a movie intended to make you think over it's characters and events AFTER the lights go on and you head for the exit, not DURING the movie trying to figure out who was the sneaky fella with the butcher knife...
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(*) There is that "shoot you" Sean (Bacon) -> Jimmy (Penn) part of the parade scene that MIGHT be interpreted as demonstrating Sean's intentions towards investigation of Jimmy's transgressions present and past, but in the movie it's somewhat ambiguous. In the book (D. Lehane) Sean's intentions were made very clear, whereas in the movie it is up to the viewer to decide...