Mystic River

I first heard of Mystic River way back when it was still in production. I was at my friend Colby's house reading a movie magazine, which talked about many upcoming theatrical releases—one of which was a new film by Clint Eastwood starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon, with the mysteriously enticing title Mystic River. The general description of the film intrigued me greatly, and left me excited to see the movie when it came out.

Only I did something I usually don't do when anticipating a theatrical release: I read the book first.

One night in early 2004, I noticed a worn-out paperback of Mystic River sitting on a shelf in my friend Bentje's house, and I picked it up and started reading it. The first 30 or so pages (taking place in 1975) were decent reading, but I wasn't really hooked until section two of the book started (taking place in 2000). The novel Mystic River was written by crime novelist Dennis Lehane, and I read much of the book while on a business trip to Chicago in March 2004—mostly on the plane—and my timing for finishing the book was almost too perfect: only a few days after I finished it, the movie started playing at the Drafthouse! So naturally I had to go see it.

Mystic River essentially tells the story of three boyhood friends: Sean Devine, Dave Boyle, and Jimmy Marcus (Marcus was the last name in the book; in the movie, the last name was changed to Markum—a change that I didn't really like). The story opens when the boys are all like 12 or 13, coming from blue-collar families in Boston. Jimmy is kind of a punk at that young age, and decides that he and the others should carve their names in wet cement—not a major crime in itself, but they're nevertheless witnessed by two men who claim to be cops. Quickly falling into an authoritative mode, the two men order Dave to get into their car so they can take him home and talk to his parents. Only problem is, the two men aren't cops . . . and Jimmy and Sean only realize this after Dave is taken away. Dave manages to escape his kidnappers after a few days, but the whole experience leaves him badly scarred on the inside (we're left to presume that he was molested during his capture), and the Jimmy and Sean don't really talk to Dave anymore after he returns home.

Fast-forward to the present, where Sean (Kevin Bacon) is a Boston detective, Jimmy (Sean Penn) is a reformed ex-con running a coffee shop with his 19-year-old daughter Katie, and Dave (Tim Robbins) is still living with the scars from his kidnapping many years ago. The trio don't necessarily make an effort to reconnect regularly, even though Jimmy and Dave are now related through marriage (Dave's wife is cousin to Jimmy's wife). But one morning, the abandoned car of Jimmy's daughter Katie is found on the streets of Boston . . . and not long after that, Katie's dead body is found nearby. And only the night before her body's discovery, Dave returns home covered in blood. So naturally, the question arises: did Dave have anything to do with Katie's death?

Not surprisingly, Sean is the detective who takes the case, along with his partner Whitey Powers (Larry Fishburne, who didn't strike me as all that comfortable in the role, I might add). Sean ultimately is the one who has to break the news to Jimmy, in what is probably Sean Penn's most famous scene by now—crying out in agony as the cops hold him back from the crime scene. But not only must Jimmy and Dave carry the burden of Katie's death; so must their wives. Dave's wife Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden) obviously suspects Dave of somehow being complicit when he comes home covered in blood, and Jimmy's wife Annabeth (Laura Linney) has the ultimate "Lady Macbeth" moment at the end of the film. That scene stayed very true to the book, I might add, even though it caught a lot of viewers off guard.

But I felt Mystic River was, in large part, a character study about friendship, about loyalty, about tragedy—and ultimately, about unfulfilled deliverance. Watching Jimmy's reformed facade begin to crumble under the anger of his daughter's death, of his thoughts for vengeance, was fascinating. Although it's not a motif that's entirely new to director Clint Eastwood, having explored it once already in Unforgiven several years back. But with Jimmy, in both book and movie, his relapse into his old criminal ways was so genuine and authentic . . . but as we see, in the end it was the wrong path to follow, because it doesn't lead to the redemption of Katie.

All around, the acting was pretty impressive! A lot has been made about Jimmy's eventual breakdown and ultimate "getaway", if you will. Having read the book, Sean Penn nailed Jimmy's character perfectly, and I can't really disagree with his Oscar win (though part of me was crossing my fingers for Bill Murray that year). Jimmy's more of an anti-hero than a hero, not someone you're supposed to like. Even though he does what so many parents want to do when their children are taken from them, Jimmy's actions are ultimately meaningless, and he knows this—which is probably why he shows only marginal regret at learning that he's killed the wrong guy at the end. Kevin Bacon did a pretty good turn as the old friend who's caught in the middle of all this ugliness, but it's ultimately Tim Robbins who fills the screen as the emotionally deteriorating Dave Boyle, whose old demons come out as both Jimmy and Celeste suspect his involvement in Katie's death. Robbins performs masterfully in Mystic River, superbly showing all the hidden anxieties of Dave, his inability to let go of what happened to him as a child, afraid to admit even to himself some of the truths he's come to realize over the years. Robbins fully earned his Best Supporting Actor statue. And I had to laugh at the surprise cameo of Eli Wallach as the shopkeeper who introduces Sean and Whitey to Just Ray Harris. I had to laugh because a) Eli Wallach has to be in his 90s if he's a day, and b) there's the inevitable throwback to Eastwood's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, where Eli Wallach played villain Tuco opposite Eastwood's Blondie.

The Eastwood movie stayed pretty true to the book, though my one complaint about the movie is that it felt cramped. It was adapted to the screen by Brian Helgeland, who had also adapted L.A. Confidential several years earlier. In its adaptation, though, I felt a lot of the story was really compressed, with little breathing room to allow for pacing—and that's with a running time of 2 hours and 20 minutes! Maybe it's because I'd read the novel that I noticed this, because the novel allowed for easier pacing. Much of the dialogue was lifted almost verbatim from the novel, too, without much liberty taken by Helgeland. Though I loved the authenticity that Eastwood lent to the film. He filmed it right in Boston, perfectly capturing the blue-collar feel to the city, not to mention the accents. I'll admit, some of the poorer, more blue-collar elements of the story were depressing, but I'm a huge fan of local color and authenticity. (I just wish we'd have a film taking place in DC that imparts the same strong and authentic feel to life here.)

I can proudly say that I picked out Katie's killer in the novel! It wasn't predictable by any means, but more of a lucky deduction on my part. And as Bentje explained to me when reading the novel, the clues are all right in front of you—in both book and movie—but so subtly masked that you don't even notice them the first time around. It's a genuine case of the solution being right out in the open, but somehow still invisible.

When rating Mystic River, I give the movie a 7.5, though I give the book a 10. The movie translated pretty well to the big screen, with the usual ups and down, but as is often the case, the movie can never truly measure up to the book.