Tired plot devices enhanced with overwrought acting don't solve this mystery.

Rating: 4/10 (21 December 2004)

The last time I saw Sean Penn's work, he was taking himself far too seriously in the tragically flawed 21 Grams--a depressing and simple story jazzed up by cutting into pieces and presenting them out of order. Mystic River is a depressing and simple story jazzed up by over-acting and music (written by Clint Eastwood) that sounds like a grade-school etude exercise. Why is it that contemporary auteurs believe that lack of a sensible plot, comic relief, and meaningful themes can be overcome through extreme close-ups of actors mimicking emotional turmoil, lingering for eternities as Penn's eyebrow twitches or Robbins pouts. Essentially, Penn thinks his old pal Robbins whacked his daughter, so he whacks Robbins. Oops, made a mistake. That's the story. The backstory involves childhood sexual abuse, and has nothing to do with the plot. It's tacked on to the side with a few pins related to where Robbins really was (whacking a child molester) and why he was such a loser (haunted, of course). Unfortunately, the film does not address in any meaningful fashion the issue of child molestation. It also does not handle the murder mystery very well, since the actual killers of Penn's daughter turn out to be related to Penn in a way that would make a hack writer blush with shame. Mystic River is also riddled with gangster flick clichés most writers discarded decades ago -- the Savage (!) brothers who do all the dirty work, the crusty wife who encourages Penn's criminality like Lady Macbeth, the cop from the old neighborhood (Kevin Bacon) with mixed feelings about the gangsters he investigates, and the (old man) river (running through it) that serves as "silent witness," and so on. This is an altogether mindless, humorless and simple flick all done up with production values and more meaningful looks than a Mexican soap opera.