MYSTIC RIVER
Directed by: Clint Eastwood.
Produced by: Clint Eastwood, Judie Hoyt & Robert Lorenz.
Written by: Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane.
Director of Photography: Tom Stern.
Edited by: Joel Cox.
Music by: Clint Eastwood & Lennie Niehaus.
Released by: Warner Brothers.
Country of Origin: USA. 137 min. Rated: R.
With: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden & Laura Linney.

In Clint Eastwood's new film, a whodunit with literary aspirations, one tragedy begets another in working-class Irish-Catholic Boston. Childhood friends growing up in the same neighborhood - Jimmy, Dave, and Sean - are forever scarred when Dave is kidnapped and sexually abused. Now adults, Jimmy (Penn) is a grocery store owner, husband and a loving, if overbearing, father. Sean (Bacon), by his own admission, has alienated his wife, but seems to be a dedicated, fair-minded police detective. But Dave (Robbins) is an unemployed family man, lumbering and socially awkward. The plot thickens when a brutal murder brings up buried rivalries and more than a few resentments. It’s not long, though, before Mystic River becomes a misguided veneration of vigilantism, tattoos and fisticuffs. It’s hardly worth tying the loose ends of the film’s many subplots. Sean’s motivations and actions aren’t clearly explored or directed. And Annabeth (Linney), Jimmy’s wife, suddenly morphs into Lady Macbeth. All that is clear is that director Eastwood is grasping for straws in his attempts to turn pulp into arty moral ambiguity. Still, with luminaries like Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden in the cast, there are bound to be a few riveting moments: Celeste (Harden) planting a passionate kiss on her husband, Dave, despite the fact that he's blood-soaked; and Jimmy in a donnybrook with cops who try to hold him back from a gruesome discovery. But no one, not even the mercurial Linney, seems comfortable with their accents. (Dialogue ranges from the predictable, "When I got out of the joint" to the pathetically poetic "I know in my soul I contributed to your death, but I don't know how.") Much has been made of Penn’s performance, but it’s little more than a Dead Man Walking stretch. Harden and Robbins fair better in their theatrical portrayals (complete with facial and bodily ticks) that perhaps call too much attention to themselves.

Steven Cordova, poet, whose chapbook, Slow Dissolve, is available from Momotombo Press
October 25, 2003