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Jimmy Markum, Sean Devine, and Dave Boyle are three Boston boys who spend their days playing hockey and stickball. But when Dave is abducted right in front of the other two, their lives are forever altered. Skip ahead 25 years. Jimmy is married and runs a local convenience store. He has three daughters. The oldest, Katie from a previous marriage, is nineteen and sneaking around with a guy behind her father's back. Sean is a cop whose wife has just left him. She calls him every other day but instead of speaking into the phone only waits for Sean to say something. Dave, who escaped his abductors after suffering horrifying abuse, is now a quiet adult with a wife and young son. The three men rarely see each other, that is until Katie's murder forces them back together.

This is a fairly standard set-up. Three men with a shared history are suddenly forced to confront that history, and Clint Eastwood's new movie, Mystic River, is a solid, entertaining genre picture elevated above the average by spectacular acting.

This isn't to say that Eastwood doesn't know what he's doing. He directs with confidence and sure sense of pace. He is sometimes too fond of high-angle camera placements and unfortunately panders with shots that pull back portentiously. There's a particularly egregious moment when Jimmy finds out his daughter is dead, and we catch a birds-eye view of police trying to restrain him. It's a visual cliche that's not worthy of a director like Eastwood. Still, Mystic River is mostly free of that sort of thing. The issue of abuse is handled with care and subtlety, and the minor characters are fleshed out beautifully. Two of Jimmy's old friends, Nick and Val Savage, could've descended into mere cartoons. But their tough-guy personas serve both to highlight aspects of Jimmy's life (he served time 16 years before) and provide neighborhood color.

Indeed, I was particularly impressed with how closely Mystic River resembles a neighborhood. This feels like a place where people have grown up together--their shared sense of past affects their actions in both positive and negative ways. Jimmy's mysterious relationship with Katie's boyfriend explodes in the movie's final half-hour. Without the foundation of the neighborhood, it would've felt like a gimmick, but here it feels entirely natural, as if it's only to be expected that Markum might have a history with someone much younger than he is.

It's also great to see Kevin Bacon in a worthy role again. After starring in a string of flops (Hollow Man, Trapped, Stir of Echoes), he returns to form as police detective Sean Devine. His partner, Whitey Powers, is played by Laurence Fishburne, who also turns in a solid performance. The two have a great chemistry together--Devine as the cop who knows the neighborhood but might be a little too close to the suspects, Powers as the outsider who gets a little too suspicious before all the facts are in. Bacon's portrayal, in particular, reminds us of why he's been a favorite of directors and audiences for years. His intense stare, friendly laugh, and way with a pregnant pause make him a wonderfully compelling character.

Sean Penn is also great as reformed ex-con Jimmy Markum. His anguished intensity has rarely been better, but it's not a one-trick pony. There's a humanity to his grieving father that's real. And his desire for vengeance is tempered by his desire to leave his unsavory past behind. Which pole he'll choose serves as one of the movie's primary conflicts.

That theme of escaping one's past is of course foundational to Dave Boyle (played by Tim Robbins), and Robbins captures a lost soul struggling through life. Though cinematographer Tom Stern doesn't do Robbins any favors with his high-contrast lighting--Robbins's eyes are perpetually illuminated by the glare--he is still able to portray a man and not just a caricature.

While this is a movie dominated by the men, Marcia Gay Harden stands out as Boyle's wife, whose uncertainty and nervousness grow to overshadow her love for her husband. Only Laura Linney, as Markum's wife, is unfocused. Part of the problem is that her role seems clipped, so her big Lady Macbeth speech near the movie's conclusion comes out of nowhere.

This points to Mystic River's primary flaw: the script by Brian Helgeland. The screenplay has many nice moments; a trio of interlocking interrogations is especially strong. But the desire to keep the audience guessing ends up undermining the narrative itself. It feels like a "Law and Order" episode with really good actors. What Eastwood and Helgeland don't seem to understand is that we care much more about the relationships and the neighborhood than we do about who killed Katie Markum. So throwing us off with various red herrings only serves to distance us from the material. We start to see this as a police investigation rather than as a story of strained relationships and men struggling with their history. And when the film doesn't follow the investigation all the way to the end, it's strangely unsatisfying.

Still, Mystic River is a welcome offering. Its sophisticated portrait of a Boston neighborhood is supported with some sparkling performances and a compelling tale. If you're in the mood for a mature film, you won't go wrong here.  

J. Robert Parks  10/6/2003