Jimmy, Dave, and Sean all grew up in working-class Boston and were great friends. When they commit some petty vandalism with a newly laid sidewalk, a man identifying himself as the police intimidates them until Dave is forced into the car. This image of Dave being driven away with Jimmy and Sean looking on is one of many repeated images in the film that are a little too blatant to be really effective. After Dave is subjected to sexual (we assume) abuse, he escapes and survives to age along with Jimmy and Sean. But Dave (Tim Robbins) never really seems to have gotten past that day. He lives with his wife (Marcia Gay Harden) and son and just seems as if he’s about ten minutes behind any conversation you might have with him.
Jimmy (Sean Penn) has had problems with the law in the past, but we sense that he’s trying to get past that as he operates the corner store in the neighborhood. If Dave is haunted by the past, then Jimmy is looking forward to the future with a second wife and his children to keep him company. But his dream is shattered when his daughter is found murdered. The past seems to have caught up with him and it confronts him in the form of Sean (Kevin Bacon) who is now a detective working on his daughter’s case. The three men get pulled together again as the investigation proceeds and focuses on Dave who came home the night of the murder with suggestive wounds and an alibi that can’t be substantiated. The investigation muddies with her loving boyfriend ruled out as a suspect before being ruled back in, Jimmy’s former accomplices who still hang around him, and Dave’s ever-changing alibi.
This is one of Eastwood’s strongest works coming after the uneven, poorly paced Midnight In The Garden Of Good and Evil and the lazy Blood Work. Even though his visual symbolism can get rather tiresome, it may be necessary to hammer home the themes of constancy and change. The camera work is quite nice and the art direction is excellent in portraying the homes of these people. The sets are perfectly real and fit the story perfectly. It is a shame, though, that Eastwood couldn’t lay off the score. There are moments when the music just seems utterly wrong for the scene; an example of which would be after a horrifying act near the end, the screen goes white and this peppy, upbeat music starts in. Bad idea.
Marcia Gay Harden deserves a supporting actress nomination for this movie. Her portrayal of Dave’s wife, a strong woman who gets betrayed by her own emotions and does the wrong thing and the wrong time for the right actions is one of great weight. She is fantastic and utterly believable. Kevin Bacon is also strong in a role that he doesn’t overplay as he has the tendency to do.
I’d say that Sean Penn and Tim Robbins are really good in the movie, but they are weakened by the script. There are moments in Mystic River when they deliver monologues that don’t make much sense except to serve as Oscar bait. I believed their acting and performances but felt that the script made it too obvious what the points were for them to hammer home. Laura Linney is competent as Jimmy’s wife until a Lady MacBethish turn near the conclusion upsets the tone of the movie and their screen relationship up until that point. Linney tries to make this seem plausible, but it just isn’t; it’s a clear sign of the plot grinding ever onward.
Mystic River is a movie to primarily be seen for the acting. While the effort is made to turn the film into more than that; an exploration of how children grow and are affected, it doesn’t quite work. More exposition with the children before Dave’s abduction would be very beneficial to the audience to get more of an idea of what they were like. As Eastwood pans his camera over the deep blue Mystic River, the river serves as a blatant simile of the film. While we are allowed to see beneath the surface of the character, we are only allowed to see what the filmmaker needs us to and are left to put everything else together ourselves. Not the best choice if caring about the characters is necessary.