"Mystic River" often feels a little too inclusive as if director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Brian Helgeland have tried too hard to get too much of the source material into their filmed adaptation. As a result, certain of its characters are not as fully developed as they should be, certain situations come off as being a bit contrived — and ultimately, the entire film feels a little punchless.
To be fair to the filmmakers, it would have been difficult to completely adapt and do justice to a novel as ambitious as author Dennis Lehane's best-selling mystery. But it's a film with better intentions than execution.
"Mystic River" is being wildly overpraised, partially because of the pedigree of its name cast. However, their work is extremely inconsistent and lacking in real emotional weight. And the same can be said of the film itself.
The title refers to a tributary that divides parts of a Boston community. It also divides three childhood friends, Jimmy Marcum (Sean Penn), Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) and Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins), who have already been estranged because of a tragic incident in their past.
Now they are reunited when Jimmy's daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum), is found murdered in a nearby park. The revenge-minded and somewhat shady Jimmy considers vigilante justice. But police detective Sean finds himself on the other side of the law when he and his partner (Laurence Fishburne) are assigned to the case. And Dave becomes one of their main suspects. Even Dave's wife (Marcia Gay Harden) has doubts about his innocence.
Helgeland lifts some of the dialogue directly from the book, and some of his clarifications and additions do work well (especially the writing-in-concrete analogy). Meanwhile, director Eastwood tries to give it the heft of a Shakespearean melodrama — but little of it feels real, and the wildly divergent performances don't help.
Penn is terrific and enlivens the material every time he's on screen. The same goes for Harden, whose confused and terrified wife is probably the most sympathetic character here. But Robbins' performance lacks subtlety, and Bacon simply seems bored (at least part of that is the fault of the screenwriting, which reduces Sean to a cardboard character). Worse, the film completely neglects Laura Linney as Jimmy's wife until the end, when she delivers a speech that can best be described as a Lady Macbeth soliloquy.
"Mystic River" is rated R for occasional use of strong sexual profanity, violence (two brutal beatings, as well as some gunplay), crude sexual talk and use of vulgar sexual slang terms, brief gore and a brief sex scene. Running time: 137 minutes.
E-MAIL: jeff@desnews.com