Original Soundtrack

When something triggers a distant memory of youth, you don’t have to reach very far for the feelings to come rushing back. It might be the quality of pale sunlight on an autumn afternoon that suddenly makes you remember with intensity a long ago day when you were hanging out with a couple of pals. Life was relatively simple. You move away, or drift away, and those pals become part of the past. For Jimmy, Dave, and Sean, the memories are forever tainted by an event that haunts and perverts their actions as grown men. Clint Eastwood’s new crime drama explores the private territory that each man has traveled before they once again cross paths through the investigation of a murder some 25 years later. Though each retains the particular character he had before the incident, brilliantly summoned by screenwriter Brian Helgeland, each carries his own inner demons into adulthood. The riveting story of a criminal investigation is seamlessly interwoven with an examination of the lasting impact of a brutal assault on one of the boys from which they all bear scars.

It’s 1978 Boston, and as the three carve their names into fresh cement in their gritty waterfront neighborhood, a car stops next to them. A cop gets out and reads the riot act about defacing public property. A passenger waits in the car, a priest. Faced with the authority of both the law and the church, the double whammy impels the boys to follow orders. Jimmy is the tough guy, Sean, the shrewd one. That leaves Dave. With a combination of bad luck and bad timing, he becomes the chosen one.

Twenty-five years later, Jimmy (Sean Penn) owns the local market, and has honed his tough street smarts. He is married to self-assured Annabeth (Laura Linney). Fragile Dave (Tim Robbins) has a young son and is married to tense, high-strung Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden). Sean (Kevin Bacon) is a police detective who has moved across town and is trying to salvage his troubled marriage. When Jimmy’s oldest daughter disappears, the three come together as principal players in the case. As he has in past films ("The Unforgiven") Eastwood pokes and prods the essence of right and wrong, and uncovers the dangers of acting on the certainty of knowing which is which.

The film succeeds as taut thriller, and more deeply to expose the terrifying human desire that things will not turn out, as we fear they must. As the police investigation gets more complicated for Sean and his partner (Lawrence Fishburne), circumstantial evidence brings the long ago incident into the foreground. The visual style marked by strong framing and close-ups reveals shifting alliances among the characters. With excellent performances from all, "Mystic River" is fine cinematic storytelling and leaves one pondering the nature of those secrets of the soul that can’t be denied or buried, no matter how careful one is to cover them over with the veneer of a normal life.