There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Rating: 8/10 (22 April 2007)

Clint Eastwood seems to like irony, and how well he tells us about it! In Mystic River, as in Unforgiven, we see damaged characters doing their best to cope with their memories of the past. Three childhood friends were scarred by an incident that occurred while they were playing street hockey. Chance brings them all back together again about thirty years later, basically to show us all the pall that childhood incident cast on the rest of their lives. Ordinary reality is distorted by their respective consciences, and we see how each one struggles to come to terms with the memory that will not go away.
This is not a feel good movie, but it is a good movie. It is a movie about what happens when life has dealt us the Queen of Spades. There are no heroes here, only people doing the best they can at what they know. And in that sense there is some nobility to these characters, as the wife of one claims toward the end. There, but for the grace of God, go I.