wait until it's on video/dvd... i'm not joking...

Rating: 1/10 (1 November 2003)

i went to see "mystic river" because it was highly recommended by a few people i knew... and also all that media hype it was getting did push me to go and see it... and my verdict is... hold your breath, total mediocre... yes, it is... if you really want to see it, wait until it comes out on video/dvd... it's not the worst movie by any means but a very disappointing one since it could have been so much better...! first of all, music is horrendous! as some of you might know, it's done by clint eastwood... and i bet you he doodled some chord progressions on piano, probably a steinway in his music room or whatever, and wrote a "delicate" melody and gave it to some orchestrator and have it played by boston symphony orchestra! only clint eastwood can do that, right...? it's so lame! flat, boring, nothing! gee... in a scene where sean penn and laura linney are in a hospital waiting to see their dead daughter, where it's supposed to be "tragic", music is in, even though i hate to be so conventional, a major key! is it supposed to be soothing...? it has nothing to do with the scene... there's no depth... it's so damn detached, in a wrong way, from the characters! then the acting... i heard from people and media how great everybody's acting is... come on... it seemed like clint eastwood assigned each actors an expression they should have on their faces all the way through the movie! sean penn with i-am-such-a-tough-guy-but-ready-to-cry-for-my-daughter-anytime with his clenched teeth, hope he has good teeth... and tim robbins with i-didn't-do-anything-to-deserve-this long face with such dead eyes... and marcia gay harden's i-am-so-scared-and-don't-know-what-to-do-and-cannot-say-even-one-complete-se ntence expression... i didn't get any different sides of any of these characters... it really felt like they were all "acting" how it is supposed to be other than really feeling any of it... oh, laura linney's character is soooo lame... she doesn't have a single "real" line until the very end... and what she says is so not convincing... kevin bacon's character was ok... even though the character had no depth or whatsoever... at least he had more expressions... the only character that was a halfway decent was the boyfriend of sean penn's daughter... then sean penn's daughter... see, you can totally see her breathing when she's supposed to be dead... come on... it's just 30 seconds or so... didn't she get paid enough? cinematography is not impressive at all... all the tv interviews were so much about it being filmed in east boston... to capture "that vibe"... what vibe...? there was nothing special about it! it could have been in toronto! could have been in the bronx! opening and ending showing the mystic river didn't do anything... editing is as plain as it gets... jesus... is there anything i liked? let me think... NO! ah... i was so disappointed with clint eastwood... i thought "unforgiven" was amazing but i saw it more than ten years ago in korea... so maybe i should watch it again... i really tried to like "midnight in the garden of good and evil" since it had kevin spacey and judd law... but i couldn't... so... there you have it...