SHAKESPEARE IN BOSTON

Rating: 10/10 (10 October 2003)

Were he alive today, Shakespeare could do no better than the novelist, Lehane, and screenwriter, Helgeland, have done with MYSTIC RIVER. Shakespeare would also have done well to have hired Sean Penn and Tim Robbins to act in his work and employ Clint Eastwood to direct it and write the score.
Clint Eastwood's directorial work, at its finest, and believe me, this is at its absolute best, manages to separate the viewer from the sense that he is in a movie theatre. But this is not merely the result of the man's mastery of his craft, it is the result of Eastwood's ability to uncover the emotional connection, in the viewer, between what he sees on the screen and what he sees, though usually ignores, in real life. Horrific events occur in everyone's life - and though the events may not be newsworthy (such as the death of a loved one from a lingering disease), the impact is historic for our inner emotional lives. Eastwood has managed,in MYSTIC RIVER, to create a world so personal, so much like our own, everyday lives, that virtually anyone will be able to read themselves into the characters - if not, the actual circumstances of the crimes depicted. When the viewer leaves the theatre, therefore, he leaves it to see his own, everyday life, in a new, sometimes unbearable, light.
It's not "just a movie" as much as you may want it to be.