Great movie

Rating: 8/10 (16 December 2004)

I had read the book, I have never been a Sean Penn fan, so I didn't go to see it in the movie theater because I didn't think I would like it. But I caught it on HBO when I was channel surfing, and I thought it was very well done. I can't understand the all negative comments. Maybe people are so used to stereotypes and formula flicks they just didn't "get it." Lady MacBeth instigated murders, Annabeth didn't, but she was 100% on Jimmy's side, right or wrong. There are still people like that. Jimmy was sinking into depression and falling apart after killing Dave, and she wasn't going to let him self-destruct. What was done couldn't be undone, and she still had two kids to raise, what would she do if he disintegrated? What's so hard to understand about that? I thought Penn did an excellent job portraying all of Jimmy's conflicting emotions. People are rarely all good or all bad, most of us are a bundle of conflicts. I personally didn't relate to the performance of Dave's wife, such a weak, neurotic character was out of place in a lower middle class community. A person like that would have never survived to adulthood. As for all the clever observations about DNA, and was Jimmy arrested, etc., come on, this wasn't CSI where everything is neatly tied up at the end of the hour. In real life lots of wrongs are never righted, and lots of crimes go unsolved, and justice is often all in the perception. It was unremittingly heavy, just like the lives of the people portrayed in that community in Boston's underbelly. The sound was bad, but all in all I thought it was an excellent dramatic movie.