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Mystic River (2003)

Mystic River (2003)

GENRESCrime,Drama,Mystery,Thriller
LANGEnglish
ACTOR
Sean PennTim RobbinsKevin BaconEmmy Rossum
DIRECTOR
Clint Eastwood

SYNOPSICS

Mystic River (2003) is a English movie. Clint Eastwood has directed this movie. Sean Penn,Tim Robbins,Kevin Bacon,Emmy Rossum are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2003. Mystic River (2003) is considered one of the best Crime,Drama,Mystery,Thriller movie in India and around the world.

In the summer of 1975 in a neighborhood in Boston, three kids, Dave Boyle and two of his friends, Jimmy Markum and Sean Devine, are playing on the sidewalk when Dave gets abducted by two men and endures several days of sexual abuse. Eventually, Dave escapes traumatized throughout adulthood. Jimmy is an ex-con and a father of three, whose daughter Katie, is found dead, and Dave becomes the number one suspect. Sean is a homicide detective, investigating Katie's murder, ends up finding himself faced with past and present demons as more is uncovered about Katie's murder. Learning Katie had a boyfriend, ballistics later turn up a gun belonging to the father, which then puts her boyfriend as the suspect. Will Sean find out who killed Katie? Will Jimmy make it through the investigation? And will Dave ever find out what really happened when he was abducted?

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Mystic River (2003) Reviews

  • spoiler.who really directed the ending?

    expe672004-02-27

    SPOILER ALERT a very good movie all the way through the 2 hours plus...until the killing of tom robbins's character.all he had to say was "let me take you where i threw the child-molestor's body".if he w a n t e d to die,then that was not made clear.after that, we don't see any confusion or grief in sean penn's face when he hears they found the real murderers.the discussion with kevin bacon is so underplayed,like they do not really care or they are relieved the movie ended.what about arresting him?or okay if he doesn't want to, what about bacon's partner laurence fishburne?he was the driving force trying to find the murderer and questioning bacon's priorities.what happened to him?he disappears leaving sean penn's character almost smiling at the end.where is the grief for killing his friend or for his daughter?and laura linney?i am sorry for what they did to you.such a talented actress.but who could pull it off, the monologue she gives at the end when we do not know anything about her character and what made her react like this.all the psychological journey we are experiencing through out the movie from a director who seems to value the human condition prepares us for a climax,a purge (of some kind at least).instead, we are left with an ending with full of questions and more important with a "who cares" mentality that destroys the prior two hours.it could have been a great movie.will the dvd have an alternative ending?(not a "good" one necessarily,but a better one).just joking.i am sorry for any grammar errors but english is not my first language.but movies are.

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  • Second time around

    Antagonisten2005-11-08

    I must admit that when i watched this movie for the first time i didn't really think that much of it. Sure the acting was amazing, but that was expected. But then something happened. I got a chance to read the book by Dennis Lehane and suddenly all the pieces fell into place. I watched the movie again and this time it was amazing. I don't know how i should interpret how my feelings toward this movie changed after reading the book. Is it a good adaptation if i like it more after reading the book? Should a movie stand so well on it's own merits that the book is not necessary? I don't know myself, all i know is that it all became so much clearer after reading the book. First of all the acting was amazing even the first time around. But still, after reading the book it was as if the characters gained one more level of depth. I have always felt that Tim Robbins is the true gem in this movie. His pained portrayal of the lost soul Dave Boyle is pure magic, seldom has an Oscar been so well deserved. Sean Penn is predictably great in his portrayal of Jimmy Markum. It's a difficult character, a person you really don't know what to think about. In one respect he is a worried father, in another respect he is a cold-blooded man with few things to like about him. The rest of the cast is solid, with Kevin Bacon the brightest star among them. When it comes to the plot itself this was where much was changed from reading the book. The trick is not to watch this as a crime-drama. Rather it's a movie about behavioral patterns, about humans. What they are capable of and what dictates their actions. There are huge amounts of sadness and melancholy to this story. Of people unable to break out of the path it seems life has chosen for them. This i think didn't really break through to me that well when i watched the movie for the first time. But the book is much more clear on this and when i watched the movie again i saw it there as well. In the end this is a triumph of two things really. First the great acting of some of the finest actors in Hollywood today, second the sensitive and thoughtful directing of Clint Eastwood. He manages to bring out Dennis Lehanes story in a way that is so understated and minimalistic at times i didn't even catch on the first time around. But if i look closely all the elements are there and it is truly a great adaptation as well as a great movie.

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  • Falls sort of greatness but superb nonetheless

    Buddy-512004-11-30

    Lovers of great acting had best not pass up 'Mystic River,' Clint Eastwood's powerful, award-laden adaptation of Dennis Lehane's best-selling novel. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon play three working class Bostonians forever bound together by a mutual childhood tragedy that has since gone on to define the kind of people they've become and the kind of lives they've led. The film begins with a brief prologue as we see the three youngsters - Jimmy, Sean and Dave - out playing in the street one day, when they are confronted by a pedophile who, posing as a policeman, tricks one of them, Dave, into getting into the car with him and another man. Fast forward to the present as we pick up the trio as grown men who have, for all intents and purposes, gone their separate ways. Penn is Jimmy Markum, a former petty thief who spent two years in the slammer but who has since turned straight and now owns a neighborhood liquor store. When Jimmy's daughter from his first marriage turns up murdered, the three men's lives intersect in ways they could never have imagined. Bacon is Sean Divine, a homicide detective assigned to the case, and Robbins is Dave Boyle, a sporadically employed man who may be a prime suspect in the murder. Dave still lives with the trauma of that earlier soul-shattering experience, while Jimmy and Sean wrestle with why they managed to escape the cruel finger of fate that pointed so grimly at their hapless playmate. The film is about how the events of our early lives (and, in the case of Jimmy, it doesn't stop at this one incident) can end up coming back to haunt us later down the road. 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 it needs to be, with heavy-handed ironies and obtruding parallelisms that don't seem to know when to leave well enough alone. Laura Linney, as Jimmy's second wife, has a key Lady Macbeth moment late in the film that might have been effective had we been more fully prepared for it and had her character been more thoroughly developed throughout the course of the film. As it is, the scene seems to come out of nowhere and leaves us both bewildered and hanging. Still, these are minor quibbles when it comes to a movie as finely acted and directed as this one is. Penn hits all the right notes as a man facing the worst experience life could possibly throw at a person - the murder of one's child - trying to make sense of a tragedy that defies any rational explanation. Robbins beautifully underplays the role of a man scarred forever by what happened to him in his youth, now endeavoring to function as an adult when he was robbed of any semblance of a childhood. Bacon is excellent as the man who attempts to put all the pieces together, not only of the case but of the shattered lives he and his two buddies have been living all these years, and Marcia Gay Harden is outstanding as Dave's loving wife who struggles with what is perhaps the greatest moral dilemma faced by any character in the movie. Linney, Lawrence Fishburne and Tom Guiry offer fine supporting performances. As director, Eastwood allows his superb cast ample time to develop their characters, never hurrying the proceedings along and always allowing the conversations to play themselves out. He recognizes the quality of the material and feels no need to gussy it up with self-conscious camera angles or fancy editing. He also uses the bleak settings of blue collar Boston as an effective backdrop to the stark, chilly tale he is telling. Perhaps it is just an odd coincidence that three of the very best movies of 2003 - '21 Grams,' 'The House of Sand and Fog' and 'Mystic River' - all suffer from the same tendency on the part of the filmmakers to move away from reality and towards melodrama and contrivance in the final act. Of the three, '21 Grams' and 'The House of Sand and Fog' are harmed less by this than 'Mystic River' because they have a somewhat deeper thematic base and richer character development than does the Eastwood film. Still, 'Mystic River' is a mighty impressive achievement for those who made it and a rich, memorable experience for those who see it.

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  • Zero

    cyrilmorong2003-12-30

    WARNING!! MAJOR SPOILERS!! I don't know what the movie was supposed about. I liked the first three-fourths of it, but I cannot recommend it. I think it is full of logical inconsistencies, especially involving the characters. Take the Kevin Bacon character: At one point, he tells his partner Laurence Fishburne that he will put the cuffs on his friend faster than Fishburne will if his friend (Tim Robbins) is guilty. This establishes him as a guy who puts duty above friendship. So why does he not arrest Sean Penn at the end of the movie when he knows Penn killed Robbins? Either he does his duty or he doesn't. Take Fishburne's character: What happens to him at the end of the movie? Where is he? He would be the first to investigate the missing Robbins character, whom we know is killed by Penn. Somebody would be investigating his disappearance. Is it just an unsolved murder or disappearance? Penn's character: He gets established as a loving, caring father who went straight after serving time because he loved his daughter. We see him say to his daughter's picture something like `I know I contributed to your death but I don't know how.' He is by himself, so that should be an indication of a caring, thoughtful guy, which, to me, he turns out not to be by the end of the movie. He is cold and ruthless. In movies, when we are shown characters doing something alone, it is an indication of what they truly are. That is like a contract the movie makes with us. He also knows that Robbins was abused as a kid. Yet he kills Robbins based only on circumstantial evidence. Robbins's wife thinks that he killed Penn's daughter. But Penn has got to be smart enough to want more evidence. Then he kills Robbins in front of 3 guys who will be surely grilled and leaned on by the cops because it is well known they associate with him. A bartender also saw them all together. And Penn would have to know he was a prime suspect. Wouldn't a guy like Penn be shrewder? Wouldn't he late till later, and have it done when he has an alibi? Robbins's wife, Marcia Gay Harden: She seems to be a pathetic character by the end of the movie. At first she seems caring, consoling Penn's wife after the murder. But she suspects her husband murdered Penn's daughter and tells Penn and not the police. Who is that dumb? Did she not want her husband to get a fair trial? Laura Linney's character: She is Penn's wife. We don't see her or get much sense of her until the end of the movie. Then, as others have said, she turns out to be Lady Macbeth. She tells her husband Penn that it is good that you do what you have to for your family. Why could that not simply mean turning Robbins over to the police? She then tells this cold-blooded mobster of a husband that he could run Boston!! Then they roll over on the bed and have sex?!?! Only cold, ruthless people do that. Why should I care about them? Coincidences: Robbins just happens to kill a guy molesting a child the same night Penn's daughter is accidentally killed? And Robbins just happened to be in the last bar that Penn's daughter was in? And Penn kills Robbins just before Kevin Bacon's character, a cop, tells Penn he has the real killers? These seem like very cheap plot devices. Too improbable to be believed. How about Penn and Bacon? They end up being very awful guys, yet they were not the one abducted or molested. Sure it happened to their friend. But it is too much to believe they would be so affected. The characters for most of the movie seemed sympathetic. But at the end, none of them, except possibly for Robbins's character that got into a car as a child with a child molester who pretended to be a cop (Penn and Bacon were there, too but did not get in) are sympathetic at the end of the movie. Penn gets back together with his estranged wife and seems to be happy with his life, so why bother investigating the murder of his friend Robbins even though he knows Penn killed him? YUK. At a parade, he makes his hand look like a gun and gives a sort of fake POW! pointed at Penn, like you're the man buddy. Or this is as much as I will do to you. And we see Penn surrounded by two or three of his thug henchman. Penn seems to have no remorse for killing Robbins. Linney gives Harden a sort of so what look, I don't care what happened to you. Harden walks around looking very sad and pathetic. Penn and Bacon don't seem to care how sad Robbins's son must be. We can see how sad he is a float with other little leaguers. There seems to be no reason why we should care about the characters played by Bacon, Harden, Penn or Linney. They are all despicable and unlikable people. And it is not okay somehow that Robbins is dead because he killed a child molester, either. If I were on a jury trying Robbins for that murder, it would be hard to give him the death penalty. The movie seems to be saying that was some sort of justice that he got killed. Yet his murder of the molester was not premeditated like Penn's murder of him was. Or the conscious decision of Bacon to be okay with Penn killing Robbins. And the way Penn killed Robbins is brutal, painful and demeaning. Penn treats him in a very mean spirited way. The movie seems to be saying this is okay. Again, YUK.

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  • Am I the only one who thinks this movie sends a terrible message?

    metamerc2006-02-22

    Call me simple, but I just watched Mystic River for the first time last night and it appears to condone the killing of the character played by Tim Robbins in a sort of, "Well, he's been all messed up since he was raped and molested as kid, anyway, so doing him in does everyone - especially him - a big favor." Excuse me, but I think that's a terribly brutal message to send. Yes, physical and emotional abuse can cause untold damage, but there are ways for people to seek out treatment through therapy. The best thing about this film is how most everyone kind of 'expects' the Tim Robbins character to be found guilty and is surprised in the end. The fact that the writer makes 'Dave' actually complicit and responsible for _another_ murder does not wash with me as a sort of way of saying 'Well, he deserved what he had coming to him' as is insidiously and mischievously implied. It seems like a cop-out to me. The bottom line is that Sean Penn's character brutally murders his childhood friend based on hearsay and the third friend, played by Kevin Bacon, suggests he will just look the other way even though it's pretty clear he knows Penn did it. And he's a cop! So what the f*ck is going on with the little speech Penn's character's wife gives at the end of the film? "You could be the king of this town?" Maybe true, but also clear is the fact that he's going to be eaten by his demons in the process. And all of this is OK? Watching the freaking parade stand murderers and friends side by side? Being guilty of murder is OK as long as you atone for it? Let's put our attention and hopes on the next generation? Am I the only one to find this to be a bunch of crap?

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