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| 10/24/2003 |
| Mystic River: Eastwood blows the film world's head Clean Off |
by Wes Bennett
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“Mystic River,” Clint Eastwood’s ambitious, new crime-drama combines three main types of stories into one complex film: a character study, a police drama and a tale of tragic, misguided revenge.
The story is about the events surrounding three men from a South Boston neighborhood. When they were children, two pedophiles posing as policemen abducted one of them and repeatedly abused him.
Twenty-five years later, the friends are still in the neighborhood but have gone their separate ways: Jimmy (Sean Penn) runs a small grocery store; Sean (Kevin Bacon) is a homicide detective and Dave (Tim Robbins), the abduction victim, is a blue-collar worker. But when Jimmy's beloved 19-year-old daughter is brutally murdered, the lives of the three boyhood friends suddenly come crashing together once again.
This is a thought-provoking movie for adults that Hollywood has, for the most part, abandoned for the security of demographically satisfying, formula plots and happy endings. The movie experience carries a lingering, powerful aftershock when one considers the painful repercussions that will forever haunt the characters.
As always, Eastwood downplays cinematic flourishes for a type of elegant minimalism, that achieves a lean, unromantic, yet empathetic view of people. Although screenwriter Brian Helgeland and novelist Dennis Lehane deserve plenty of credit, the real triumph is Eastwood's. Although plot is important, Eastwood puts a greater emphasis on character and commands pitch-perfect performances from his cast.
Tim Robbins captures the essence of a man who is held down by pain because of something that was robbed from deep inside of him long ago. Robbins adopts the slack jaw and downcast gaze of a man frozen in his worst moment. In this way, he is quietly devastating.
Eastwood has handed Penn the role of a lifetime, and the actor scorches the screen with his anguish and angry vengefulness. It is without a doubt his best performance since “Dead Man Walking.” Despite a very emotional and revealing performance, Penn manages to maintain a rugged exterior of toughness. It is a brilliantly drawn character that should earn Penn an Oscar Nomination.
As always when adapting a novel, some of the information has to be cut out. A large part of Robbin’s struggle against his desire to molest children is omitted. The film also had to shortchange the development of Jimmy’s wife, causing her reaction to be almost inexplicable when Jimmy makes a horrific confession toward the end.
But several small departures from the book were brilliant. In the film, young Dave never gets to finish carving his name in wet sidewalk cement when he gets into the car, thus a life interrupted is forever memorialized in cement. This was a great way to visually represent his unfinished emotional growth.
There is not enough room to talk about the sheer intensity of the film’s final act, the haunting main theme that Eastwood composed, the beautiful use of the city of Boston or the unforgettable images of Dave, looking forlornly through the backseat window as he is driven away, and Penn’s animal wailings as the Police restrain him from seeing his daughters dead body.
A film about pain and the repercussion of tragedy, "Mystic River" moves along its course and overflows at its climax with that indefinable but unmistakable assurance of a master filmmaker who knows just what he wants to say. There is really a lot of depth to the film making it one of the year’s very best.
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| "We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it." |
- Jack Nicholson
A Few Good Men
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Distributed Beers
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| 5 |
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot |
| 4 |
Guinness Draught |
| 3 |
Newcastle Brown Ale |
| 2 |
Bass Pale Ale |
| 1 |
Samuel Adams Boston Lager |
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