Mystic River: what a crock (spoilers, if it matters)

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I can honestly say that I've never seen a movie like Mystic River, at least not that I can remember. Most of the lead performances are excellent, the plot is well-constructed, overall, and I didn't like it one bit.
In the first ten minutes we are introduced to characters who are immediately ruined, before we care one whit about them. This feels at once rushed and manipulative, and by the end of the movie it feels even more rushed than it does initially, because the last ten minutes--about which more later--could easily be lopped off to at least give us some sense, any sense, of the salient characters before they're carted off screen and destroyed. The solitary instance of contact we see between Sean Penn and his daughter is only creepy, not endearing, because it looks like they might as well be on their way to making out. The daughter is extremely cute, by the way, so it would've been nicer to see more of her (hee hee), although this probably would've meant being weirded out by her relationship with her dad for still longer. As it is, we see her once, twice, then presto she's dead. I tried my best to be care, but couldn't, because I was too busy feeling bullied by the swelling strings, which come to Clint's aid whenever he's unsure that mere human suffering will be enough to cue the appropriate feelings.
Like I said, the lead performances are mostly excellent, the exceptions being the two wives, Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney. Marcia Gay spends most of the film being flustered and suspicious, and either waving her hands chest high or cupping her mouth in her hand. Given that we have no reason to think she's ever been otherwise than entirely neurotic, it's a wonder that her relationship with her husband hasn't borne some unfortunate fruit before now. As it is, the whole denouement of the film is mostly her fault, which is just plain silly. Laura Linney, meanwhile, might as well be acting in another movie, because the things that actually happen in this one seem at best to only remotely concern her, and mostly to just plain annoy her. Her step-daughter has been brutally murdered, and her husband is falling apart emotionally: what a pain in the ass, huh?
Laurence Fishburne threatens to overwhelm an unusually un-irritating Kevin Bacon at every turn, which is too bad because it's probably Bacon's best role...except for the fact that he is one half of the most superfluous, cloying subplot in the film, the other half being his wife, or rather a close up of her lips. When we finally get to meet her, she looks like some plastic surgery hobbyist, and she is vacantly useless to boot. Why is she there? Why do we care about her? I don't know.
Tim Robbins and Sean Penn do a fantastic job, although Tim is given a few monologues--having to do with, no shit, vampires and werewolves--that elicited audible laughter from the audience. Sean Penn is thankfully given none, although there are some bits of overacting that wouldn't be so bad were it not for the aofrementioned CAN YOU FEEL THE DRAMA string swells.
Oh, and people seem to smile at really inappropriate moments.

But never mind all that: the film would be merely a decent, if largely unaffecting, drama, were it not for the last ten minutes. I haven't read the book, so I don't know what happens, but I can tell you what happens in the film, which is that everything suddenly becomes incredibly weird. Kevin Bacon, a cop, fails to arrest Sean Penn, who has just confessed to killing their childhood friend. Then Kevin's wife calls, and Kevin, entirely unaffected by either Dave's death or his uncharacteristic failure to arrest his admitted killer, has a happily-ever-after moment that is inappropriate, unnecessary, and contrived in the extreme, exacerbated by the fact that the woman who plays his life can't even get her lips to act convincingly. Then things just go flat strange for about five minutes. The moral gravity that has complicated each character for the preceding two hours dissipates, and everyone becomes a sleazy, amoral cipher. Sean Penn's wife delivers one of the most callous few moments of dialogue I've ever seen in a movie, brushing off the murder of her cousin's husband and lauding her childhood-friend-killing husband by saying that he has "four hearts" (??), and then she and Sean Penn have a disconcerting, it's-good-to-be-evil makeout session, before the movie winds down into its final few moments of what-the-hell-is-going on weirdness, wherein the lead characters all wordlessly stare at Marcia Gay, who wanders hysterically through a parade, looking for her dead husband and trying to comfort her depressed, gay-looking son.
Then Kevin Bacon makes an imaginary shooting-you-with-a-pistol gesture at Sean Penn, who, just to remind you, has recently confessed to killing their childhood friend, and Sean Penn makes this hey-don't-look-at-me gesture back, and then the movie is over. I was left blinking and feeling weirdly disembodied. It was the single most anti-climactic ending I've ever seen, so entirely out of step with the rest of the movie I think it must've either been tacked on without Clint's knowledge, or a symptom of senility. I suppose it's supposed to be open-ended--Marcia Gay and her impendingly gay son go after Sean and the "Savage brothers" (which, by the way, is one of the dumbest screen names on record) and blow away Laura Linney to boot, who responds by rolling her eyes in irritation before expiring, or something--but really it only serves to contradict the preceding film and make you feel like you've just wasted money and time on something that was resolutely unmoving to begin with.
All that said, please go see this film, so that we can talk about how bizarre the ending is, and how mysterious it is that every critic in America seems not to notice this, and in fact seems to think the rest of the film is something it simply is not, which is to say an affecting morality tale. My only guess is that they must've been won over by the string swells.

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Topic - Mystic River: what a crock (spoilers, if it matters) - rhizomatic 08:17:05 10/21/03 (7)

Hmmm...didn't strike me that way at all... - Harmonia 23:44:08 10/21/03 (2)

But what is that look about? - rhizomatic 06:48:32 10/22/03 (1)

I agree completely - sjb 20:36:53 10/24/03 (0)

yeah you're right, but it didn't bother me. - tunenut 16:58:17 10/21/03 (0)

Your review reminds me of Unfaithful - Bulkington 09:14:00 10/21/03 (2)

Re: Your review reminds me of Unfaithful - Dmitry 10:00:46 10/21/03 (1)

Hey, I like Anna Karenina - Bulkington 13:20:05 10/21/03 (0)

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