A very teal crime-drama

Rating: 9/10 (24 August 2012)

Clint Eastwood's Mystic River is a richly crafted picture by a director who has churned out more great films than many new directors probably will in their lifetime. Give the man a script, he'll work wonders, or give the man a camera, and he'll make wonders. His dedicated, sensitive look at human sympathy, grief, and emotion colors in the extensively detailed and professionally acted meat that makes up the entire film. This isn't another lame "whodunit" drama, but a moving and impressive detective epic.
The story focuses on three friends, Jimmy, Sean, and Dave, who grew up in a Boston neighborhood, where they spent their days playing hockey in the streets. One day, they are caught scribbling their names into wet concrete by a man who claims he is a police officer. He manipulates Dave into getting in the back of his car, and it turns out, the man is a child molester who keeps Dave captive for four days before he escapes.
Fast-forward about thirty years later, and the men have drifted apart but remain in Boston. Jimmy (Sean Penn) is an ex-convict, with a wife and a nineteen year old daughter named Katie (Emmy Rossum), who he keeps extra close to him, while Dave (Tim Robbins), who too has a wife (Marcia Gay Harden) and son, is still distraught over his molestation and is left a very distant man.
When Katie is murdered in cold-blood, their old friend Sean (Kevin Bacon), a local police detective, is hired to investigate, bringing along his partner (Laurence Fishburne). Sean has been long estranged from his wife, who calls frequently only to remain silent on the line.
In the mix of this murder, Dave is one of the suspects, returning home from the shooting late at night equipped with a shaky alibi. He claims he can't always recall events perfectly. But the murder of Katie does one thing ostensibly favorable and that is it reunites three long lost friends. They all have lead pretty morose lives in one way or another and seemingly have all left their potential in a cloud of dust behind them.
Eastwood, who does not show himself in the film, reminds us that he can still carefully examine characters and show us what they're worth. He paints them with elaborate strokes, ones that leave an impact on the viewer and not ones that are filler and instantaneously disposable. His bitter direction, depicting a cold, murky Boston, often raining and tinted with teal, is sublime and effective.
Aesthetically, the film is composed from the ground up on a winning recipe. Penn gives a terrific performance, playing a man who is divided between restoring his life for his daughters and pursuing the life of spur-of-the-moment madness. Robbins is a gifted actor when handed the efficient material and he, just the same, immerses himself in the role of Dave, playing another character torn between sanity and a crippling reality.
The film is photographed with eerily picture-esque images by Tom Stern, written with style and depth by Brian Helgeland (working from Dennis Lehane's novel of the same name), and is all captured masterfully under veteran Eastwood's direction. Through all the bitterness, despair, and angst, Mystic River remains a story about complicated human drama, the tedium, yet realism, of criminal investigations that are neither far- fetched or CSI-simple, and how human nature functions as a whole.
Starring: Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, and Emmy Rossum. Directed by: Clint Eastwood.