In the long and morally repugnant tradition of films glorifying the mobster lifestyle

Rating: 1/10 (22 March 2006)

I vomited when I first saw this morally bankrupt film and I am still feeling queasy writing this.
"Mystic River" has the outward appearance of a worthwhile drama until you come to the clincher, which is that, in life, there are weak people, people you can execute without proof of their guilt  or who deserve to die or be raped, or both, like the Tim Robbins character, because they can't defend themselves or can't manage to be loved or respected by their wife or, like the dead girl, because she tried to escape her father's control. And then there are the strong who murder and rape other people and can get away with it because they have sexually satisfied and lobotomized, loving wives and they benefit from a strong support network in their community. The strong characters happen to be mobsters and the film glorifies their lifestyle. In all respects, this film is a practical manual for the application of Nazi principles to daily life situations.
This would be enough to qualify "Mystic River" as the best screen adaptation of "Mein Kampf" so far, if you don't count the works of Cronenberg or Tarantino. But wait, as they say, there's more...
The Tim Robbins character having been kidnapped and sodomized by heterosexual authority figures when he was a kid, grows up to attack a homosexual man having sex with a teenager in a parked car (we're talking about consensual gay sex, here). He brutally kills the man in retribution for his past. The discovery of the victim's body only serves, in this film, to confirm Tim Robbins' "innocence" of another crime, because the life of a homo has absolutely no bearing in the equation of life, death and justice in this twisted universe.
In a Greek tragedy, the fact that Sean Penn's daughter was killed by the children of a man he has himself killed earlier would have been considered delayed justice or the work of fatality (i.e. divine retribution). Not in this film, it ain't! Sean Penn has already avenged himself on the wrong person (the "loser", the weak guy, Tim Robbins) and he walks away scot-free from this horrible act of stupidity and primal bestiality with the help of his loving wife (Laura Linney in a masterful performance) and the complicity of his childhood friend, the cop (Kevin Bacon), because (1) the cop considers that he has more things in common with the perpetrator of this crime (Penn) than with its victim (Robbins) since they share the same pagan values of the "school yard code", which says that it is simply not cool to snitch  which also happens to be the Mafia's founding principle; (2) both men are normal heterosexuals who share the same penis obsession (the penis must prevail), Kevin Bacon being more preoccupied with his marital problems (born of a typically macho lack of communication with his wife) than with upholding the law; and (3) gangster Penn has the means to buy the silence of Tim Robbins' widow (because, as usual in this kind of film, crime pays very well, thank you).
The finale is particularly stomach-churning: The two happy heterosexual couples (Penn, Bacon and their subservient wives) are all smiles as they bask in the noon-day sun while the unworthy female (Robbins' widow) hides her shame in the shadows. Because she is the real guilty party, don't you know. She snitched
"Mystic River" is just another chapter in the long history of the glorification of gangster and hit man values in modern American films, which started with "The Godfather". It is a piece of degenerate filth with an A-list veneer. It also deifies the invincible heterosexual paternal phallus, which must be respected and worshipped at all times, as a perfect representation of Bush's America.