Bill Murray lost the Best Acting Oscar to THIS?

Rating: 5/10 (19 June 2004)

I just watched Mystic River. Bill Murray got robbed at the Oscars. Here are my thoughts:
The script was awful. I admit, I have no idea what a group of childhood friends from Boston would stay to one another in the circumstances that the film portrays. But in attempting to capture the plight of a torn father, the writing lacks conviction and humanity. The only well written character is Tim Robbins', who seems to convincingly capture a sexually abused child. The film lacks an overall character development for the entire cast and jerks the audience around with what we would believe the personality of Sean Penn's character is.
The acting was as good as it could get with the bad script writing. Tim Robbins did a fantastic job, as did Tom Guiry as Brendan Harris. The rest of the cast just had such terribly written scripts that I don't feel they had enough to work with. Laurence Fishburne and the two actors playing the Savage brothers were completely lifeless and uncompelling. And seriously...DEVINE?? I think that Clint Eastwood has acted in too many bad cop movies and a campy name like Devine is something he'd just dive on.
And that brings me to my biggest complaint: The directing. Clint Eastwood should stick in front of the camera. I am sorry, he gives no room for the actors to act, he is all about sweeping shots meant to capture some overall "artistic" metaphor about the river that aside from the films location and brief mention of its name has NOTHING to do with the story - this story could happen anywhere from Burnaby to Boston to Barcelona.
This is the same tripe that Hollywood loves to make - predictable plots, stereotyped characters, supposedly universal themes of family, life and death, and finally, uninspired directing that gets attention purely out of star power.
Go and see Lost in Translation if you want to see how humans actually live. See Mystic River if you want to compare something to all the bad jokes about cop movies - which ultimately this is.