Warner Bros. | 2003 | 137 mins. | Rated R
Beginning with his directorial debut, 1971’s Play Misty For Me, Clint Eastwood’s style has been decidedly lifeless, resulting in films that plod along—managing to be simultaneously laid back and heavy handed—a directorial approach that has often fail to impress me. But, 2003’s Mystic River, a film in which he doesn’t appear, is a highpoint of Eastwood’s career. The emotionless approach that may hurt his previous efforts actually enhances the material here. Almost every Eastwood film opens with a helicopter shot over a town or city, here, that device has a strong connection to what the movie is actually about. As the camera glides over the dark waters, we know that the river plays a central role in the drama about to unfold.
Three 11-year-olds are writing their names in wet sidewalk cement when a car pulls up; the driver flashes a badge and commands one of the kids to get in. Fearful, Dave—the kid whose name remains unfinished—gets in the car. The vehicle pulls away slowly, forebodingly, Dave’s frightened face framed in the car’s back window. The other two boys are left helpless, watching in the street as he is taken away. Dave is locked away in a basement and molested for four days. The police scour the area, but can’t find him. Miraculously, Dave escapes—the camera rushing with him through the trees floating up to show the blue sky, his mother closing the blinds as he returns home. Fade to black.
Twenty-five years later, Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) lives in the same neighborhood. He’s married to Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden) and has a young son whom he accompanies to and from school every day. Clearly still traumatized, Dave walks with stooped over with a shuffled gate, rarely talks in little more than a mumble and tells his son bedtime stories about wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Expertly adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel by Brian Helgeland, Eastwood uses Dave’s story—an it’s enduring impact for his two boyhood pals—as a vehicle to show how the effects of one event can shape how a group of people live and interpret their lives. While many might expect Eastwood to heap violent image upon violent image to get his point across, instead he lets things boil. To Eastwood’s credit, he piles on the outrages, allowing each character scenes that reflect the damage that has been done to them. “Vampires, pronounces Dave one night. “They are undead. But maybe there’s something beautiful about it, like someday they wake up and forget what it’s like to be human.”
Her husband’s theory about vampires alarms Celeste, who seems to have little knowledge of Dave’s childhood abduction. It only confirms her nagging suspicion that Dave had something to do with the recent murder of 19-year-old Katie (Emmy Rossum), because he came home late that night with bloody hands and a knife wound, which he attributed to a would-be mugger.
The dead girl’s father, Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn), happens to be one of the two boys who watched Dave disappear all those years ago. Further, the third boy, Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) is now the lead detective investigating Katie’s murder. Though they’ve had little contact over the years, the three men are now thrown together in the face of another tragedy; forced to face the guilt and anger of a decades old event that help to shape the men they became.
Jimmy, a local gangster and ex-con, still hangs around with a couple of local hoods known as the Savage brothers (Adam Nelson and Robert Wahlberg), who do a lot of his dirty work. His first wife (Katie’s mother), died years earlier while he was doing a stint in prison. As a result, he raised the girl alone, until he met his current wife, Annabeth (Laura Linney). Devastated and angry, he comes to believe his daughter’s killer is the boy she was dating behind his back, a relationship uncovered by the cops, the cops Jimmy doesn’t believe can do the job he must do.
Though Sean Devine seems to be an upstanding citizen, his personal life is no more settled than his boyhood friends. His wife left him while pregnant with their first child. She regularly telephones him but says nothing before hanging up. His closest relationship is with his partner, Whitey Powers (Laurence Fishburne).
The magnitude of Mystic River’s power lies in its performances. Penn practically disembowels himself on camera, peeling back the raw layers of his soul in one of the most vulnerable, uncomfortable, and honest portrayals I’ve ever seen. Though this takes nothing away from Tim Robbins, (who along with Penn, won an Oscar for his role), who gives an equally powerful performance. While Penn lets almost every emotion poor out of him, Robbins let’s his body speak for the character a lot. You can read his anguish on his face, in his gate, the halting tone of his voice. Kevin Bacon acquits himself very well too. In a part that gets stranger by the minute, he doesn’t have quite the same level of emotional baggage as his other make co-stars, but he makes you feel for Sean’s situation.
A haunting film, Mystic River asks some tough questions: could a victim of childhood molestation really turn into a monster capable of killing a teenage girl? Can a devastated ex-con resist the urge to find and punish his daughter’s murderer? Can a detective struggling with his own personal issues find a way to repair his tattered relationship? Buoyed by standout performances from each one of its talented cast, Mystic River belongs in the collections of all true film aficionados.
Using a dual-layer BD50 and a VC-1 codec, Warner Brothers provide an image that looks solid and vivid, with inherent print grain present but at a minimum. The transfer maintains the film’s original 2.40:1 aspect ratio, with solid blacks, yet not so deep that they obscure detail; the object delineation is excellent. I didn’t notice any digital anomalies. This is easily a film that merits an upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray.
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack provides a fairly strong dynamic impact when necessary, though the film is mostly dialogue, so that’s not a huge issue. In addition, there is smooth overall clarity and subtle but very deep bass. The audio engineer uses the surrounds to good effect for neighborhood noises, traffic, crowds, bands, sirens, helicopter flyovers, and musical ambience reinforcement. The sound isn’t reference quality, but it does its job quite effectively.
Mystic River arrives on Blu-ray with the same solid special features that first appeared on Warner Brothers’ 3-disc Deluxe Edition DVD (minus the bonus audio CD). The special features are presented in standard definition, but nearly two hours of Charlie Rose interviews more than make up for it.
• Audio Commentary: Actors Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins discuss Eastwood’s directorial style, the on-set atmosphere of Mystic River, and their respect for the material. They even touch on the intricacies of their craft and the manner in which they developed their characters. While they are fairly engaging, don’t expect much about the production itself, and some dreaded silences.
• Beneath the Surface (SD, 23 minutes): Eastwood, Lehane, Helgeland, and key members of the cast examine the adaptation of Lehane’s novel, the traditional filmmaking and storytelling techniques Eastwood employed, and the nature of the tale, its themes, and its subject matter.
• From Page to Screen (SD, 12 minutes): This Bravo TV special features some solid interviews, though clips from the film are a bit long.
• Charlie Rose Interviews (SD, 111 minutes): The best material on the disc comes in the form of three fascinating Charlie Rose interviews with Eastwood, Bacon, and Robbins. This material is ‘must watch’ stuff.
• Theatrical Trailers (SD, 4 minutes)
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