Mystic River

A-

I was little leery of watching this movie going in. It had won some acting awards including Best Actor for Sean Penn and Best Supporting Male for Tim Robbins. To me that means very emotional performances, but maybe not a great movie. Mystic River is certainly a showcase for strong acting and Sean Penn delivers the kind of performance that he is so good at, but the rest of the movie holds up too. At heart it is a crime drama as the police investigate, and close the net on their prime suspect, even as Sean Penn vows to get revenge.

The big extra is that the police investigator, family of the victim, and prime suspect all knew each other as children and have gone separate ways. Otherwise this would almost be like an episode of CSI. I found myself drawn in to the story of the characters for the most part, with the exception of Kevin Bacon's family issue. As you learn more, the tension builds, and the ending is strong (the very ending was confusing to me though). Anyway, this is a good movie, but seeing Penn and Robbins (along with Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, and Laura Linney) at the top of their form brings it up to the next level. A-.

Back to Index