Brilliant Rage

Rating: 10/10 (6 May 2004)

Perhaps Mel Gibson should be crying foul at all the negative attention he's gotten when he can easily point to Clint Eastwood's `Mystic River' as a film with perhaps a dimmer view of a religious culture, this one Catholicism. Expertly using a variety of sacred icons, Eastwood's harrowing tale (based on a Dennis Lehane novel, unread) of the interaction between three childhood friends who cross paths after the murder of one of their children finds its true culprit in the systematic repression and abuse of children and women by their faith. Perhaps unsettled by current events, Eastwood, through Tom Stern's careful cinematography, can barely conceal his rage: the gliding camera consistently pans upwards to the sky, seemingly searching for answers but coming to the conclusion that love in the Catholic Church has been perverted into cruelty and discrimination (presided over by an indifferent God). Usually Eastwood the director exerts direct control over his emotions but here it's impossible not to be aware of the moral revulsion of a man shaken of his convictions and his anguish as he reacts to the world around him. The performances are nothing short of astounding: as the grieving, vengeful father of a murdered daughter, Sean Penn is alternately moving and terrifying and delivers an emotionally thorough performance; Tim Robbins, as the abused child grown into a shattered adult--and the instant natural suspect--abandons his usual smugness and, by deliberately underplaying, galvanizes; and Kevin Bacon, the friend who has become the detective on the case, is intelligent and complicated as a man haunted by memories of a childhood altered by a single, horrifying act and how that act has affected his ability to connect with the wife who has left him; the women, played flawlessly by Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney, represent both extremes of where their faith has relegated them, with Harden rejected by it and Linney brainwashed by its male supremacy. The script by Brian Helgeland is a model of concision. A masterpiece--perhaps, when all is said and done, this decade's most potent commentary.