Mystic River

Because Clint Eastwood films his productions with so simple a hand, a film of his might not hit you until well after you leave the theater. There are always hints that what you're seeing is not run-of-the-mill. A regular ending to a suspense drama is when the bad guy gets caught. In this case, no one who should get caught is caught, and the ending is a musing on the nature of community and friendship and love, which seems so at odds with the reality of the film that you wonder why Eastwood did it. Except that it has everything to do with the reality of the film. Kevin Bacon (playing the Eastwood character), Sean Penn, and most impressively, Tim Robbins, are old childhood friends with one horrible secret that comes back to haunt them -- that one of them was sexually abused as a child. But that's not really what the film is about. The film is about love, and the things that are done in the name of it, whether that be protection, deceit, betrayal, jealousy or even a cry for help. Eastwood is a master at realism (what you see is what you get) with the deeper symbolic meanings hidden below this surface. You watch a scene, played "as is," and you don't immediately recognize the thematic layer because what you're seeing is so involving itself. Are any of the rest of you amazed that an actor known for tight-lipped, unemotional roles can put out such complex creations? And he keeps getting better and better.

year: 2003
length: 137 min.
rating: 4.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327056/combined