Flawed

Rating: 5/10 (3 December 2003)

Spoilers.
Much has been said about how the final act of this film goes off the tracks.
I agree with those comments, but I think there is a more fundamental flaw present throughout the film. Simply put, the movie does not make an adequate case for its underlying premise that the cycle of destructive behavior presented here all stems from the initial abduction of Tim Robbins' character. Defenders of "Mystic River" claim that the film's conclusion works because its point is to depict a tragic cycle: Robbins' abduction touched off a cycle of dysfunction that infected several lives, causing Sean Penn to detour through a life of crime that would itself set in motion forces that would: (a) kill Penn's daughter; and (b) cause Penn to kill Robbins under the mistaken impression that Robbins' was responsible for his daughter's death. This "cycle of pain" concept is made explicit by Penn's remark to Kevin Bacon near the end of the film: "Sometimes I feel like we all got into that car."
Here's the problem, however. There is an absence of convincing proof that what happened to Robbins as a child actually caused any of the lifestyle choices Penn made years later. I just don't buy that Penn turned to a life of crime (and hence committed the murder that would orphan the boy who would kill Penn's daughter) because a boyhood friend of his was kidnapped and abused. There's just nothing in the movie to really link one occurrence to the other. As a matter of fact, in the opening scene, the kid who plays Penn's character as a boy actually seems very much like he's already destined to have problems with the law. In his brief few minutes on the screen, he exudes a wrong-headed and causeless rebelliousness. It makes you think his ship sailed before the movie even began. He's a punk through and through. Robbins' kidnapping doesn't have anything to do with it.
Consequently, after Penn has murdered Robbins, I just don't buy, and am somewhat irritated by, his comment that "sometimes I feel like we all got into that car years ago." I'm inclined to answer: "Well, you didn't. Only one of you got in that car, and endured that abuse, and you just murdered him. Nice going." Really, Penn is letting himself off the hook.
Apart from the missing causal link between Robbins' abduction and what follows, which is a rather fundamental problem, the third act of the film is badly handled in some other respects. For instance, Penn's costuming during the last half hour is silly. Suddenly he's all decked out from head to toe in black leather, in a display of cartoonish villainy to match his sudden revelation to the audience as a dangerous criminal. Earlier in the film, we sympathized with this character very deeply as he wailed when learning that his daughter had died. By this point, he's acting like a James Bond nemises. It's such a bad directing choice by Eastwood.
Also, Laura Linney's big monologue in the bedroom near the end is one of the most stupid, incongruous scenes I've ever seen jammed into a movie. Up to this point, she has been a relatively straight forward blue collar housewife. Suddenly she's Lady MacBeth, telling her man that he's a "prince" and he could be "running this city." It is completely out of left field. What is the point of this scene? In what way does it advance the "tragic cycle of pain" theory that fans of this movie cling to as evidence that it has a point? One gets the impression that the screenwriter simply wanted to make a reference to Shakespeare to add a little artistic cred to his product. It is inexcusably bad writing to shoehorn it into the final minutes of a movie to which it bears absolutely no thematic relationship.
"Mystic River" is not an out-and-out bad movie. The performances are strong, and certain individual scenes are powerful (like the aforementioned scene in which Penn discovers his daughter's death), but it suffers so much from it weak points that I think it ultimately weighs in at B- level.