not as good as it thinks it is

Rating: 6/10 (1 April 2009)

Mystic River is good but not as good as it thinks it is (but still fools you into thinking it's better than it is). Sean Penn is good but not that good, he isn't quite there with his character, you can see the actor underneath. Tim Robbins, however, is excellent as a man whose soul has been ripped out of him but he's still shambling onwards without it. His story is very moving but sometimes borders on the usual sentimentality. The music is occasionally irritating & there are occasionally excruciating directorial flashes like when, after Jimmy has realised it's his daughter dead, the camera pans slowly up into the sky. The moment is held far too long. But otherwise the sets are nice, spacious,almost clinical, to counter the messy emotions. One problem I found is that frequently I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying, even when rewinding and replaying a section of dialogue several times. Even with stupid uneducated people it is still possible to act them well but actually be understood. And I was confused about a lot of things - ie if the 3 main characters are meant to have grown apart why, after the murder, does Dave's wife suddenly seem to be Sean's wife's best friend? And other things seem a bit muddled and foggy but I can't put my finger on anything specific, it's just that things don't quite add up. Jimmy's wife's speech to him at the end almost defies belief - "nothing you do can be wrong"? Hello?- he's just brutally killed an innocent man on mistaken information and wrong conclusions when he wouldn't listen to the truth. The end also seems to drag on a bit, though Kevin Bacon's last gesture to Jimmy is interesting.