Mystic River (2003) Review

Don't be fooled by the contemporary Boston setting. For all intents and purposes, Clint Eastwood has made another superlative western.

Kevin Bacon in Mystic River (2003) (Courtesy of IMDB)

For whatever reason, three is a magic number when it comes to classic westerns. Whether it's John Wayne, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson in Howard Hawks' last great film, Rio Bravo, or Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Jaimz Woolvett in Unforgiven, the idea of a holy trinity of gunslingers thrown together in the face of adversity is as timeless as it is potent.

In Clint Eastwood's 24th directorial effort, Mystic River, this archetypal trio is embodied by actors Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. Sean (Bacon) is ostensibly the town sheriff, a proud and somewhat tormented Massachusetts State Police detective who barely acknowledges the fact that he was once a close boyhood friend to both Jimmy (Penn) and Dave (Robbins). He is able to pretty much keep it that way until a terrible incident forces him to ride back into town and indirectly confront the tragedy of their shared youth.

Most of the action in Mystic River is confined to a single sloping street where Jimmy and Dave live within a few hundred feet of each other, a modern day version if you will of the two-bit western towns of old. While Jimmy runs the general store, Dave struggles mightily to find happiness, ironically spending most of his time playing Whiffle Ball in the backyard with his son. From the very beginning of the film, there is a portent of doom hanging in the air, much like the calm before the storms of High Noon, Shane and any number of other seminal westerns.

Sure enough, when Jimmy's eldest daughter is brutally murdered down by the river and Sean comes in to investigate with his deputy Whitey (Lawrence Fishburne) in tow, the townsfolk rally behind Jimmy in his time of need and tacitly approve of his determination to carry out some sort of vigilante justice, irregardless of his boyhood friend Sean's efforts.

In transposing the basic elements of the classic western to a contemporary setting, Eastwood has made a number of brilliant choices. One is his decision to shoot the film on location in a Boston neighborhood well past its prime. The heavy accents, downtrodden demeanors and strict adherence to an Irish Catholic honor code manage to conjure up a modern day enclave that could not possibly be more anachronistic. Eastwood's deliberately unhurried directing style and pared down editing only serve to enhance this feeling.

This is a frontier town, one where the women are expected to stand by their man. Part of the reason Sean is seen as an outsider, beside the fact that he has chosen to move away, is that unlike Jimmy and Dave's dutiful spouses Annabeth (Laura Linney) and Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden), Sean's wife has fled to New York and refuses to utter even a single word to him during their strangely one-sided telephone conversations.

Sean Penn in Mystic River (2003) (Courtesy of IMDB)

As Mystic River gradually builds to its devastatingly visceral climax, Eastwood freely upends the conventional notion of a movie western hero, perhaps because unlike the old days, when the good guys always won, today's complex times more often than not tilt in favor of the popularity of the bad guy. Thus, instead of Bacon's character being presented as the hero and Penn's vengeful ex-con gunslinger as the town renegade, it's the other way around. The dysfunctional value system of Mystic River's denizens bubbles up to the surface just long enough to remind Sean of why he left, before finally settling back down in time for the neighborhood Columbus Day parade.

This is the second time Sean Penn has played a dead man walking, opposite Tim Robbins this time rather than Susan Sarandon in 1995, and his performance is nothing short of breathtaking. The push and pull of quiet resignation and seething rage that governs Penn's performance recalls other pinnacles by chameleon-like masters such as Ben Kinglsey in Sexy Beast and Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs Of New York.

But where Penn really trumps the competition is in his unsurpassed ability to extend the reach of his grasp of a character into a full-bodied sense of coiled physicality. From the way he variously contorts himself during grief-stricken scenes on front and back porches to his predatory posture during his tension-filled confrontation with Robbins' sad sack character, Penn is a tattooed Zen master of the method pantomime. He is the only contemporary American male actor who is able to convey the same kind of primal excitement on screen as Marlon Brando did back in his glory.

In Unforgiven, the moral of the story was that while Gene Hackman's despicable sheriff was blissfully unaware of the very concept of redemption and Eastwood's vengeful soul knew he was well beyond its reach, young James Woolvett still had a chance to renounce his misguided and star-struck outlaw ways.

Tim Robbins in Mystic River (2003) (Courtesy of IMDB)

When the childhood friends of Mystic River, forever branded by one terrible summer's day, are brought back together again as adults, it becomes clear that one of them is permanently incapable of self-redemption (Robbins), another has made his own twisted deal with the devil (Penn) and only the one among them lucky enough to escape the decrepit ghost town on the banks of the river (Bacon) stands a chance of winding his way to the light of a new day.