Boston is a city of deep family roots and blood ties that go back hundreds of years. When tragedy happens in this city or surrounding cities, it affects everybody in the area in some way. Mystic River is based on the book of the same name by Dennis Lehane. Throw in a childhood trauma, and you have a deep-seated story that isn’t easy to watch, let alone write. Clint Eastwood did as good as he possibly could do in bringing this tragic story to life. 

The story is about a few connected men who are tied together by the murder of one of their daughters. The three men now adults Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) Jimmy Markum ( Sean Penn) and Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) were childhood friends and one of them, Dave, was kidnapped by some men posing as police officers.  He escaped four days later but was traumatized for the rest of his life. As an adult, Jimmy owns a convenience store. His daughter Katie Markum (Emmy Rossum) , 19 years old, was a young woman who went out partying one night and ended up murdered. In a touch of irony, the third friend Sean is a Boston police detective who now has to investigate this brutal killing. He is embroiled in his past by investigating this sad slaying of this girl.

Eastwood had the source material to go off of in this film, which is very dense and layered. There are multiple storylines that tie this story together and these three men. Sometimes, childhood trauma can lead to adult trauma and issues like anxiety, alcoholism, and / or drug abuse. The Robbins’ character still had a lot to deal with as an adult. He was struggling financially and unemployed, but he had a wife and son. He cared for them quite a bit. The psychological difficulties of this kidnapping when he was a kid still resonate with him. Robbins plays it pretty straight, though, for most of the film. He doesn’t let on what truly happened the night he saw Katie at the bar the night she was murdered or how his trauma has truly affected him many years later. 

Sean Penn has won two Academy Awards, one for playing Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant’s 2008 film Milk. He also won his first Oscar for playing the grieving father of the deceased girl in Mystic River. He had his Oscar moment when he found out his daughter was lying dead in a grated ditch in a park adjacent to their neighborhood. “Is that my daughter? Is that my daughter in there?” he yelled. His character was more nuanced than this though in reality. He has various moments where he is crying at the loss of his beautiful girl. Other times, he was using a tough approach to various suspects in the investigation of his daughter’s death. He wasn’t exactly the best guy in this town. He had his methods for getting things done similar to a gangster. He’s a tough guy no doubt.

Kevin Bacon has played a lot of authority figures in his career. He has played the occasional bad guy as well. He has a knack for playing police officers, though. He is very conflicted in this film because this involves his two childhood friends. He’s caught in between them both in this story. One is a survivor of childhood trauma and the other a gangster in this town. The clues lead him to one thing while his partner, played by Laurence Fishbourne, thinks it’s something else entirely. He is put between a rock and a hard place with what he has found out during the course of doing his job and his ties to this town and past connections. This story doesn’t let anyone out clean though. It just makes things worse for everyone involved the further the story goes down the rabbit hole.

Dennis Lehane, based on his book, and Brian Helgeland, weaved elements of a thriller, crime story, and a lot of dramatic moments together to create a tight script that doesn’t have any holes in it. This story could take place today as it took place back in Boston a couple of decades ago. Everybody from the wives, Marsha Gay Harden, and Laura Lynne’s characters to the kids’ young and grown-up are affected in some way by what happened in this story. This couldn’t have been an easy read, as much as it wasn’t easy to watch either, but it still stands up twenty years later as one of the best crime dramas of this century.  

Mystic River is based on a real river that flows through some pretty rough towns in the Boston area. It hides a lot of secrets from quite a few people with something to hide. It’s the perfect location to have the climactic scene in the film but also reminds viewers that something dark has happened here. Eastwood was able to capture lightning in a bottle with this film. He combined great storytelling by Lehane and Helgeland with even greater acting by Robbins, Bacon, Gay Hardin, and especially Penn.  I always like to put myself into the shoes of the characters of a film I’m watching, and this one was hard for me. On one hand, a man’s daughter was murdered and on the other hand, the clues don’t lead where that man thinks they should. It’s a quandary which in turn makes this film such a great watch. Even though it’s also hard to watch at the same time because of the difficult situation everybody is put into, It’s masterful filmmaking no matter how you look at it.

5 stars

Dan Skip Allen