Review of Mystic River (2003) by Travis R — 30 Jul 2010

There's something magical about Clint Eastwood's direction. He can take any emotionally powerful scene and make them melodramatic and laughable. Eastwood has 5 amazing actors in the film, and I can say only 1 didn't make me laugh during an emotional scene, and surprisingly enough this was Tim Robbins.

It's sad that the dialogue is written so awkwardly in some scenes. Dave is about to get interrogated for killing Katie, and Laurence Fishburne's character puts coffee in front of him and says "fresh brew.

" Who thought that was a good idea? Honestly! And when Jimmy is trying to push through the police to see his daughters body I was trying to not laugh. Sean Penn is a great actor and pulls off emotional scenes beautifully, how could Eastwood possibly screwed that up? Marcia Gay Harden is an amazing actress as well, and again I felt like laughing at some of her emotional scenes.

Perhaps the problem with Eastwood is that he wants to rush into the moments and not build them up. That's why Bergman did melodrama so well, he took his time to build up the scenes and characters that we can't even think about laughing because of their pain.

I did not feel a connection with anyone in this movie. The only reason why it gets 2 stars instead of less is because we can see the actors working their asses off trying to get the movie to work, but once you're under the direction of Eastwood there is nothing you can do about it.

It's a shame, really, because the ending was almost good.