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In Reply to: Another category: Tragedy posted by orejones on February 06, 2004 at 05:37:15:
My wife and I disliked Mystic River more than just about anything we've seen the past couple of years; to place this in proper context, with rare exception we're both impressed by Clint Eastwood's directorial efforts!As for Mystic River though, the plot was lame and predictable, and the acting, Sean Penn's especially, overwrought and unbelieveable. The crime scene where the girl is found that was supposedly so shocking, as indicated by the intense music and the detective throwing up, wasn't even marginally *yawn* disturbing (i.e., on a prime time CSI scale of 1-10, that was about a 1/2), much less unexpected. Furthermore, the heavy handed symbolism and forced irony was terribly pretenscious and constantly drawing attention to itself. The real tragedy was that we contributed money to this fiasco!
>>> "...even with some minor flaws, shows how Shakespeare would have told a tragedy today, in a solid filmic language." <<<
Minor flaws? Great Caesar's Ghost! You are kidding aren't you? If this WERE a period Shakespearean play in all liklihood Queen Elizabeth would've canceled it's future performances, permanently closed the Globe Theatre and had Shakespeare & his actors unceremoniously tortured (i.e., in return) and flogged out of London! Unfortunately, no amount of Tudoring can improve Clint's modern day Shakespearean tragedy. ;^)
Follow Ups:
I found the movie involving, despite some of the 'leaps'. In particular, the portrayal of the father's grief at the moment of realization that his daughter was dead, was right on. The debilitation and helplessness was well and accurately done.The whole, multi-level concept was interesting and not often do I see movies that will attempt anything this complex with plot development.
Predictable, in comparison to 'Siesta' or 'A Pure Formality', perhaps. Still enjoyable enough to recommend it to others.
I won't buy it though.
We differ in that I found the film uninvolving in spite of moments where the actors seemed almost believable. I so WANTED to like this film, but it just kept setting off my BS detector. For one thing, it seemed like every friggin' donut munchin' officer on the Boston police force suddenly got involved in this case! Why? How believable is that? The mysteries in Mystic River were almost as tepid as the scene of finding the girl's body, the mistaken assumptions about who the killer actually was and final resolution. The symbolism was heavy handed and almost smothering in it's pretensiousness. This is melodrama at it's worst, IMHO; it borders on soap opera, except it's highfalutin, thus a much more expensive brand of soap.Of course this is just my opinion; other's mileage will undoubtably vary.
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