Mystic River Reviews

I absolutely loved this film. The acting is phenomenal. The story is excellent, I defiantly was pleasantly surprised when the credits rolled. I would recommend this movie to anyone who loves a good crime story. Besides from the crime and abuse in this film, it pulls on the heart strings of the human soul. It invited you into a what if world, and regret and shame. By the end of the film you will have bonded with certain characters. And feel satisfied with the end result even though it is somewhat immoral. Mystic River will keep you guessing the whole time, and deliver on this review with flying colors.

I love this film!!! Mystic River is a fantastic murder mystery that is filmed with a lot of events occuring. The dialogue is something that I found quite disturbing because of the way the characters were around each other. It is one of those films that shocks you at the beginning and shocks you at the end of it too. I love films like this that keeps you interested all the way through it. Finding out who Katie Markum's killer was almost excitement to me because I really wanted to know. As the story went on, it fell a bit obvious but on other occasions it became a real mystery. It is a breakdown film of not only heartbreak but also of love and friendship.


Sean Penn was amazing as Jimmy Markum. Before his daughter was killed, he seemed like a grumpy middle-aged man but he became a very caring father after his daughter was murdered. However, he ended up having something in him that I don't think he was anticipating. He ended up being filled with rage when he found out who killed his daughter. His performance is memorable but his best is definitely Milk. Tim Robbins surprised me a lot in this one as Dave. Dave and Jimmy were childhood friends. Dave was a victim of abuse by paedophiles as a child. After an average performance in The Shawshank Redemption, Robbins has now proved he can perform something that is filled with emotion, heartbreak and with very interesting character. Robbins was the best of the film. Marcia Gay Harden was awesome as well as Celeste Boyle who is Dave's wife.


Clint Eastwood has crafted a masterpiece! Clint is a fantastic director of making different kinds of films but in adult ways. One thing that all of his films have in common for me is that they are all ordinary dramas. This is probably the one Clint Eastwood film that is mixed on how to live life carefully and to always be certain of things.


This is my favourite Clint Eastwood film as a director and I think it will be for a long time. The Human Factor looks pretty good so that might be a tough challenge. I love Million Dollar Baby and Changeling too. Sean Penn's performance is fantastic after an Oscar win for this film but his best is his other and more recent Oscar-winning performance as Harvey Milk in bio-pic Milk. Mystic River won Tim Robbins an Oscar as well. A good performance is rare from Tim Robbins. I think that this will be his best performance forever! 2003 was a great year in cinema but I prefered films like Return Of The King, Lost In Translation, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Finding Nemo that year. Mystic River is a fantastic film that has become very close to hitting my main favourite films list. January

''We bury our sins, we wash them clean.''

With a childhood tragedy that overshadowed their lives, three men are reunited by circumstance when one loses a daughter.

Sean Penn: Jimmy Markum

Eastwood's big Oscar hit along with Unforgiven(1993), Million Dollar Baby(2004), and highly nominated Letters from Iwo Jima(2006).
Mystic River(2003) is based on the bestselling novel by Dennis Lehane boasting an incredible cast to give life to the storytelling. The main leads are for Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon. Furthermore we have Laurence Fishburne, Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden. The movie itself is very dark and sober without substantial amounts of music used. The story and screenplay is brilliantly conceived, written sublimely and the acting results in being equally superb.



Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins and Sean Penn play three working-class Bostonians bound by a mutual childhood trauma that defines the kind of people they've become and the kind of lives they've led. The film begins with a brief prologue--an important scene of abduction which, while far from graphic, has a sense of foreboding. We see the three as youngsters; Sean, Dave and Jimmy out playing in the street when they are confronted by a pedophile posing as a policeman whom tricks one of them into getting into a car with him and another man. The boy escapes after days of abuse but is scarred for life. Fast forward to the present to now grown men who have, it seems, gone their separate ways. Bacon is Sean Divine, an amoral homicide detective; Robbins is Dave Boyle, a man troubled by something buried in his heart; and Penn is Jimmy Markum, a former petty thief, now with underworldly connections. All three seem to still wrestle with the past, each in their own way. All the characters instantly spark our curiosity to know them, and to feel what they feel.
I really cared for these characters because they have endearing traits and the substantial relationships are inspiring and layered.
Director Clint Eastwood gives us character storytelling in the guise of art, and is powerfully, tragically real.
It should also be known that Clint Eastwood masterfully shot Mystic River in 39 days also refusing the proposal of studio executives at Warner Brothers to film in Toronto, Canada to save on expenditures. Eastwood rightly refused and pushed to have the film completely shot in Boston where the film is set.

The Brian Helgeland screenplay makes the pain that each of these men experiences vivid and palpable. The grief Jimmy feels over the loss of his beloved child, the psychological torment Dave suffers as a result of his abuse, and the bewilderment and loneliness Sean experiences from a failed marriage all become integral to this dark tale of bitterness, revenge and attempted healing. At times, we do find ourselves wishing that the script would concentrate less on the details of the murder investigation and more on the inner workings of the three main characters. Too often we feel as if we are only scratching the surface of the roiling psychological torment taking place deep in the bowels of these men.

The plotting, particularly towards the end, often feels more contrived than perhaps it needs to be, with heavy-handed ironies and obtruding parallelisms. Laura Linney, as Jimmy's second wife, has a key Lady Macbeth moment late in the film that results in being effective.
As it is, the scene seems to come out of nowhere and leaves us both bewildered and contemplating. Mystic River is an incredible display of human emotion, doubt and how the past can sometimes come back to haunt our present.
The tune that the band is playing during the parade at the end of the movie is John Philip Sousa's Semper Fidelis, which is Latin for always faithful. A fitting requiem for such a uniquely inspiring journey.

In the wave of instant classics directed by Clint Eastwood, this may have been his best. I originally put this movie off my list to watch mainly because I felt it was one of those films that I "had to be in the mood" to watch. Man was I wrong. As much as it is dark, Mystic River tells so powerful a story, I could not help but wonder why I had waited so long to see it. Sean Penn turns in another amazing performance as this one was truly deserving of all the accolades that came during the award season.