Review
MYSTIC RIVER
Starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Opens Wednesday, October 15
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Mystic River will undoubtedly garner Academy Award nominations for at least one of its three principal actors, and possibly even one for director Clint Eastwood, but as we have seen in the past, Oscar nominations often go hand-in-hand with cinematic mediocrity.
Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon take turns making over-the-top bids for the gold-plated statuettes in their roles as childhood friends who have drifted apart over the years, only to be brought back together by a violent crime. It probably says a lot that the extremely emotive performances are by far the best thing about Mystic River, which at its core is a heavy-handed guilt trip. The script looks at the way guilt destroys loyalties between family and friends, but no matter how hard the actors try to invest themselves in this material – and their roles are meaty – the predictable scenario makes it apparent where this film is heading right from the start.
Set in Boston’s Irish Catholic community, Mystic River opens with the abduction of one of three neighbourhood friends, and then leaps forward three decades to the present day, when Jimmy Markum (Penn) is an ex-con, Sean Devine (Bacon) is a police detective and Dave Boyle (Robbins) is an unemployed father struggling to cope with the trauma of his past. Although the three haven’t fraternized together since they were kids, they all live and work within a few blocks of each other and their paths are about to intersect once more.
Unfortunately, as with last year’s Blood Work, the previous collaboration between Eastwood and screenwriter Brian Helgeland, some of the dialogue here is so cliché that it’s embarrassing to hear it spilling from the lips of such esteemed actors. Yet, the melodrama is quickly balanced out by the film’s murder-mystery plot, which kicks into high gear when Sean is assigned to a murder investigation that may incriminate both Dave and Jimmy.
Old bonds are bent, if not broken entirely, and it becomes evident that none of these men are particularly heroic – it’s Eastwood’s comfort with morality’s grey areas that saves the film from a simplistic polarization of good and evil. Eastwood is, after all, the same man who directed High Plains Drifter (1973) and, more recently, Unforgiven (1992), so it’s not like his credentials are in question when it comes to directing films about the evil that good men do.
Yet, it is precisely this focus on men alone that makes one see his directorial focus as more masculine than stately. The women in Mystic River, as usual for Eastwood, are mere window dressing. Both Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden have precious little to do but stand by and wring their hands while the men do all the important work. Penn grieves, Bacon investigates and Robbins wigs out, but when it comes to the female characters, Eastwood is lost as a director. In a film that is partly concerned with the importance of family and community in times of trauma, that’s a largely unforgivable shortcoming.
Since I’ve never read Dennis Lehane’s novel on which the film is based, I can’t say whether the film’s flaws originate there – the film’s predictable resolution occurs in an anti-climactic sequence set down by the "purifying" river of its title, and is then belaboured ad nauseum in an unnecessary denouement that ought to make even the most forgiving critics puke.
Mystic River may be Eastwood’s best film in years, but that still doesn’t mean you want to wash yourself in its polluted waters. |
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