FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
MYSTIC RIVER
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
|