Review of Mystic River (2003) by Daniel M — 06 Feb 2015

Directed by Clint Eastwood, whose career had been up and down since his double Oscar win for Unforgiven (1992), but after Blood Work (2002) failed at the box-office, critically and commercially. Clint was finding it difficult to get films made, indeed Warner Bros.

didn't want to make this one, as they thought the story was too dark and they couldn't see what Clint saw in the film. However, he proved everyone wrong, and his adaptation of Dennis Lahane's book boosted his career.

Set in Boston, it begins in 1975 when a horrible incident changes the lives of Jimmy Markum (Jason Kelly), Sean Devine (Connor Paolo), and Dave Boyle (Cameron Bowen), when Dave is sexually assaulted by two men claiming to be policemen.

25 years later, and Jimmy (Sean Penn) is an ex-con who is running a store, Jimmy (Tim Robbins) is a blue-collar worker who is married to Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden), and Sean (Kevin Bacon) is a police detective working with Sergeant Whitey Powers (Laurence Fishburne).

When Jimmy's 18 year old daughter Katie (Emmy Rossum) goes missing, and the same night it happened. Dave turned up late at home with blood on his hands, claiming he was attacked by a mugger. Jimmy suspects that Dave did it, or did he? It's a very dark mystery, but it has some brilliant performances in it, (Penn and Robbins won Oscars for their turns as broken men), it's not a film for everyone, but Eastwood's unfussy direction suits this style of film, and it was this and the Oscar success of Million Dollar Baby (2004) the following year that made Clint bankable again, and showed audiences what a fine director he is.