about boys

Rating: 9/10 (23 August 2016)

When we are children we have the impression that life is more intense. Each fact lived in childhood shapes our personality and our future. This issue permeates the entire history mixed with other ingredients such as urban violence, family relationships and the madness of man in "Mystic River" directed by Clint Eastowood.
The script is a delightful very well tied surprise, based on the novel "Mystic River" by Dennis Lhane. Three boys playing in the street and decide to write their names on a stretch of sidewalk with fresh cement. They are approached by two men, apparently police. One of the boys is taken. The rape of the boy is so implicit that the scene did not need to be shown. The escape scenes from the boy in the woods are gradually inserted in the film.
A quick camera movement makes the move to modified lives of three boys, now adults. The disappearance and the news of the death of Jimmy's daughter (Sean Pean) is the trigger for the engineered plot in which count the order in this review would be a real crime.
The performances of Sean Pean (Winner of the Oscar for Best Actor), Tim Robbins (Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actor) and Kevin Bacon are a real "competition" (in the healthy sense of the word) interpretation. The way the characters were raised and the natural spontaneity of dialogue give the film the necessary hardness of reality.
Tim Robbins is alienated and shaken by the violence of human wolves who like a "fresh meat." Sean Pean is someone who might call former mobster, but that does not lose his honor. Kevin Bacon is a more restrained police, like most men, but no less problematic. The interweaving of three different characters shows the different sides of the human being and the different reactions to the everyday barriers.
It is remarkable the high aesthetic standard of the direction of Eastwood. The filters used to give color, or rather the lack of color, with the predominance of blue and gray where actions always seem to happen at night, or at least close to it. The "track" sound and literally opens the paths of the film and is signed, surprisingly, by Eastwood himself.
Not only the technical quality is seen but the whole foundation contained in metaphors and analogies constantly present. An interesting example is the ring detail containing a priest crucifix on the finger of one of pedophiles kidnappers early in the film, a critique of incredible pervasiveness of evil.
No one should miss the chance to watch "Mystic River." A film that overcomes a police simply outcome of its history. He proposes reflections every moment. While reading subtitles thoughts fly in parallel trying to find explanations to the facts. The values ​​and justice lose their usefulness in a society in which evil is always ready to pounce. Evil and good are more relative than they seem. To wake up relaxed is better to leave the past in the bottom of the river, because there he never will.