Review of Mystic River (2003) by Spencer S — 06 Aug 2011

Between heartfelt drama and a mystery without the suspense of pure noir, Mystic River is a delayed reaction kind of film. You want to love it right off the bat, and are given good reason with the performances of Penn, Bacon, and Robbins.

Still, this plot has none of the true tautness you'd expect of such powerhouse actors. This glimpse into human behavior isn't very thorough. Sure, Penn is reliable as a bereaved father, but the criminal element that plagues his past is at first only hinted at, and then this complex backstory unfolds in the last half hour much to the viewer's chagrin.

Bacon seemingly explains everything that's missing from the plot in conversations between himself and Fishburne, much like a forties era detective film. Robbins is inexplicably strange, morphing from an abused and seemingly unhinged individual with a morose past to a labyrinth of uncertainty we can't perceive from the inside or out.

It's very depressing just to be morbid and touchy, but there are beautiful scenes by Penn especially, who whole heartedly deserved his Oscar win. What unsettles is more the blasphemous way the characters react to revelatory pieces of information, just accepting them with little conversation, as if everyone gets murdered, molested, and goes insane on an every day basis.

This especially perturbs me when it comes to Laura Linney's performance, still as frazzled as ever, but also quietly dependent on Penn. The ending is slow, and painful to watch, a culmination that is by far the most anti-climactic decision in the film's entirety.

There is beauty and angst, but it isn't the thriller you would expect from Eastwood, though he later honed his craft to a fine art.