"I think all three of us got in that car..."

Rating: 9/10 (13 February 2005)

Mystic River is not the movie you want to be watching just to kill a few hours. Clint Eastwood's 2003 film is a somber, heartbreaking look at the lives of three men who couldn't escape their childhood. Jimmy (Sean Penn, in an Oscar award winning role for best actor), Sean (Kevin Bacon), and David (Tim Robbins in his Oscar award winning role for best supporting actor) grew up in the same working class neighborhood, living the normal lives of kids playing in the street, until one day when David is taken away by a man who says he's a cop. From then on, all three boys, and later all three men are different, they can never escape their childhood. David was sexually abused by the man who took him away, and the older version of David is a social outcast, Tim Robbins does a remarkable job of showing people there is something wrong with him. Eastwood could have eliminated the first 10 minutes of the movie where the back story is told and audiences would have no problem figuring out that David had something done to him. Jimmy (Penn) has grown up in the same neighborhood to become owner of a corner store with 3 children to his late wife. Remarried, the movie shows Jimmy readying for his youngest daughter's first communion when we find out his daughter was murdered. One of the police detectives on the case is Sean (Bacon) who vows to find the killer of his childhood friend's daughter. Sean and his partner, played by Lawrence Fishburn, begins to investigate whether David was somehow involved. The rest of the movie plays as a who-dunnit with heavy doses of heartbreaking characters. All of the characters are flawed, no one is ever innocent in Mystic River. The conclusion is tough, by the end, there is no one to really root for. David comes across as pathetic, but sympathetically so. Jimmy is a caring father who wants justice, but his own past may catch up with him. And Sean? He's just trying to solve a mystery while trying to forget his past. Eastwood takes his time, setting up various characters and their characteristics. One of the underlying symbols to Mystic River is that anytime someone gets into a car, something bad happens. It happens throughout most of the movie. Mystic River reminds the viewer that every time they get into a car, the odds of dying are higher than when on an airplane. The dark, moody look to Mystic River, shot entirely in Boston (not Vancouver, horray!) is uneasy and furthers the despair we see in the characters. So many flawed characters, such a heartbreaking story.