Eastwood Still Honing His Craft

Rating: 5/10 (11 March 2017)

In hindsight, after being attached to incredible films such as "Million Dollar Baby" and "Gran Torino", the name "Clint Eastwood" has become synonymous with "master director". In this case, however, it was clear that Eastwood was still honing his craft.
For a basic plot summary, "Mystic River" tells the story of three childhood friends now grown up but still intertwined with each other:
-Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn): The intense, mob-dealer type who's daughter is murdered and provides the investigative basis for the film. -Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins): At the beginning of the film, as a child, young David is kidnapped and abused. He's clearly never gotten over that experience. -Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon): A cop on the Markum murder case.
The good thing about this movie is that it contains enough interesting themes (both physical and emotional) to keep the viewer engaged. You'll really be curious as the movie unfolds to see how all this will turn out.
Here's the problem: In a rare moment of Eastwood being "off", most of those interesting themes either die off with no explanation, or lead to conclusions that are unsatisfying. In, say, "Million Dollar Baby", Eastwood is perfect in resolving all the themes and character development. In this effort, he fails at that task.
That being said, this is still an okay movie. If you don't compare it to Eastwood's better directorial efforts, then it may look even better. Now, is it as good as the Academy thought it was in '03? I beg to differ.