Eastwood at his best

Rating: Null/10 (4 November 2019)

Mystic River is a powerful movie with a tour de force performance by Sean Penn. He, along with Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins play three childhood friends whose lives are laced with tragedy. With an intelligent, insightful screenplay and a riveting key performance, Eastwood has combined his cinematic ingredients in a mixture that is sure to get applauded. Mystic River is haunting and melancholy, and the portraits it paints of Jimmy, Dave, and Sean will stay with you after you have left the theater. In a time when the goal of most movies is to offer instant gratification with no aftertaste, this quality should be both valued and praised. Mystic River has only one misstep, and that occurs at the conclusion (and is reflective of problems with the book's final pages). Instead of ending cleanly, at the point when everything is in place for the rolling of the credits, the movie drags on for two unfortunate, unnecessary scenes. Nevertheless, this is a top movie.