This River flows magnificently; a lesson in direction as a variety of raw, human emotions surface causing tensions and sensations to simmer.

Rating: 8/10 (6 April 2010)

I suppose the poster for Clint Eastwood's 2003 film Mystic River wants us to read into it in a way that pre-ordains us for the film proper. The reflections of three anonymous men catch our eye, the shimmering and disjointed figures making themselves apparent in the water as we realise, half way through the film, that the notion of looking at one's self; looking into one's self; realising that one is the way one is and must negotiate it is prominent. Such is the tone of Mystic River, a one-part detective story; one-part vigilante tale with a twist. It is a film that kick-started the sort of run of form for a contemporary era American director that had not been seen since Oliver Stone got all angry at the back end of the eighties and went on an invigorated 'spree' of pent-up film-making which saw him attack mostly everything of what America thought made it 'great'.
Penned by American screenwriter Brian Helgeland, from a book of the same name written by Dennis Lehane, Mystic River is driven by Helegeland's rather deeply infused screen writing roots in working in pulpy, criminal orientated material (from 1995's Assassins to 1997's L.A. Confidential and then 1999's Payback) with his ability to pepper his scripts with distinct characters, some of whom are harder; weaker and wormier than others. It is this, combined with Eastwood's style of directing; that odd mixture of films with rich cinematography that carry a confrontational and knowing tone, as facts and situations are presented in stark but slick fashion, most of his films focusing on those given a voice when the chips are either on the way or already firmly down.
One character in Mystic River wants a voice, he's looking for a way to just communicate what he went through as a young boy in 1950s Boston so as to lay to rest why it is most people think he's a little strange. He is David Boyle (Robbins), a man who grew up with fellow Boston citizens Jimmy Markum (Penn) and Sean Devine (Bacon), with each of these three taking to very different paths as they grew up: Sean is a police officer; Markum a local gangster big-shot with David sort of landing half way as a guy we're led to believe is capable of some pretty terrible things on top of the fact he himself is a victim of gross wrong-doing. Mystic River has plots going on on top of, and below, other plots. The relations characters have between one another are deep and layered, as things kick off on a number of strands, all of which carry sub-plots; character motivations and developments.
The film sees Eastwood revisit ground made more famous by his Dirty Harry exploits in the exploring of the role of the vigilante as three different plights of searching for their own version of justice are juggled: a justice of a righteous nature for Devine; one of a personal nature running on love and respect for a family member for Markum and of an ill-advised nature running on hatred and prior wrong-doing for Boyle. It is Devine who captures what I think most of the characters feel most often in Mystic River: he stands on the bridge into the city following the looking at the aftermath of a car crash, gazing over the distant skyline in a rueful and knowing manner, making do with his role tackling the city's more grizzlier goings-on and a failed relationship in which a woman will not even talk to him down the phone despite calling him.
The event which binds everyone and rekindles past acquaintances leading to this exploration of fate, exemplified in Boyle's rueful reminiscing as to what everything might have been like had one of the other two boys got into a makeshift police officer's car whilst they were all young, is the death of Katie Markum (Rossum); Jimmy's young daughter. Penn plays a man attempting to deal with the grief of such a loss, in doing so balancing the fact that he didn't really know her with the hunt for her killer, whom he wants before the police find him, with the close ties within his own network that threaten to fall apart: an altercation at one point with a friend and confidant named Theo is an example of how one event can ripple down into the lives of others, capturing what keeps the core of Mystic River beating â€“ and Penn plays it wonderfully. But everything is finely distributed, the crux of Boyle's story coming out when his wife walks in on him watching a horror film and the notion of being a vampire is hit upon by Boyle as something that would see you along the lines of being "Undead, but still sort of alive on the outside", echoing his own predicament in life as someone who once felt alive until something terrible befell him. The use of lighting as Eastwood blots out half of Boyle's face in darkness works well given his entire arc, that notion of 'just' and 'unjust' co-existing as one.
Eastwood manages to balance the respective plights of these three men brilliantly, with the grief on one stand and the searching for the truth on another whilst a pot-boiler simmers on a third level; neither one overwhelming the other nor presented as spectacle. So often now is the way, predominantly due to the influence from a number of TV detective shows, that police officers need to be exploring grandeur cases and shooting around the place under the guise of an energetic aesthetic. Eastwood substitutes this with character study and a burning tension, the likes of which are so much easier to invest in. The opening scene shows three boys and their want for names and identification to remain etched forever; Mystic River then provides a tragic story of how names may well stick but leashing one's identity is an altogether different task.