There are no winners or heroes to be found

Rating: Null/10 (24 January 2006)

"Mystic River" (2003): Talent all around. Directed, produced, and scored (!) by Clint Eastwood, with many of the actors I admire most: Sean Penn, Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburn, & Tim Robbins. Add a strong suspense/crime story (with a few plot line "holes" that were probably explained in the original novel) composed from the history and psyches of three childhood friends, use great photography, supportive music...and you have one serious, high quality drama. It is not a pretty sight, and there are no winners or heroes to be found, but it rings of Truth - lives that circle and circle around shared and private histories, that never get clarified, that never utter what needs to be spoken. The meanings and characters of this story are larger than the little lives depicted. This is the stuff of epics. Eastwood created a film equal to his superb film "Unforgiven", with its use of gritty realism set in a specific time, place, and people, that rises above them to present our largest concerns as humans.