Great Movie? I Am Mystified!

Rating: 7/10 (2 March 2004)

With Academy Awards for Sean Penn and Tim Robbins for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, there can be little doubt about the high quality of performances by the cast of "Mystic River". With Clint Eastwood as the Director, attracting a cast of all-stars, which also included Kevin Bacon and Samuel L. Jackson, the mechanics and technical aspects of the film itself are all first class, the weakness, however- and it is a significant weakness- comes in the plot and storyline, neither of which meets up with the high levels of this undertaking. Most people reading this already know the details of the story, and so I will not repeat them here. I will say that "Mystic River" reminded me very much of a Clint Eastwood movie from 1978 called "Tightrope" in which he played a Police Detective in New Orleans on the trail of a serial killer. Circumstantial evidence is built up through the film pointing to the distinct possibility that the Eastwood character himself may be the actual murderer, making for some intriguing possibilities. {Possible Spoiler Ahead} At the end of the movie, however, when the killer is revealed, the audience feels cheated as the murdered turns out to be some random minor character barely mentioned in the story, with a lame motive for his actions sloppily tacked on. Hmmmmmmm. Ironically, Kevin Bacon appeared in the 1996 film "Sleepers" which dealt with grown men attempting to come to terms with sexual molestation endured while in juvenile detention in the early 70's, and also played a character named Sean. Hmmmmmmm. "Mystic River" touches on the three boyhood friends, and the tragic circumstances which ostensibly led to the dissolution of their friendship, but the movie is not about Tim Robbin's character's struggle to come to terms with his horrific experience. At least, most of it isn't. It actually cannot seem to decide what it is. A lot of the movie is a standard TV police show investigation, except that Bacon and his partner Jackson don't bother to compare the DNA of the potentially incriminating blood stains found in a suspect's car, with that of Sean Penn's murdered daughter. That might have cleared some questions up pretty quickly. (Doesn't Clint ever watch CSI? Forensic technology has changed quite a bit from Dirty Harry's days in San Francisco in 1968, though you'd never know it from this movie). Penn was quite good as the neighborhood tough still in the crime game, though he seemed to be channeling Robert DiNero at times. Bacon played his standard take on the police investigator, and Jackson's African-American character must have been named "Whitey Powers" as some type of joke. Robbins deserved his Oscar for the performance of the tortured soul, but the cheap ending, complete with Bacon giving the hand pistol shooting sign to Penn (a la Charles Bronson at the end of "Death Wish") and the glaring unfinished business and looses ends finds one watching the final credits roll with a "Hmmmmm".