Atrocious screen writing is unforgiven.

Rating: 5/10 (29 March 2009)

Kurosawa once said: "With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece. With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film. But with a bad script, even a good director can't possibly make a good film."
Mystic River is proof positive.
It feels redundant to remind you how great Eastwood and Penn and everyone else is, so I will concentrate my analysis of this film on it's screenplay.
Mystic River fatally suffers from a plot that depends *entirely* on coincidence. It is simply not satisfying. It barely stands up to one viewing, let alone multiple.
Robbins was molested as a kid. As an adult, he encounters a pedophile and beats him to death on the same night that another girl is shot and beaten to death. This girl just so happens to be the daughter of Penn, who was a childhood friend of Robbins and was there when Robbins was abducted as a child.
It doesn't stop there. Robbins is at the same bar at the same time as Rossum the night she was killed/Robbins kills pedophile.
And if that's not enough, Rossum was shot with the same gun that was used in an event from Penn's past that connects him with the killer of his daughter.
Oh, and Robbins as the same blood type as Rossum.
This script constantly attempts to make a connection between Robbins and Rossum, but since there is none, everything thrown in is a contrivance. There is no cause and effect between anything in this film. It is not believable for an instant.
There are many other problems as well. Fishburn and Bacon toss exposition with all the originality and creativity of a CSI: Miami episode, and that subplot with Bacon's wife? Remove it from the film and the main "plot" does not change. It is literally pointless.
This film is a perfect example of why cause and effect must be used to tell an effective screen story.