By EWAN MacDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * *)
Boston: the name evokes one of America's most elegant cities, autumn in New England, the leafy academia of Harvard, crews rowing on the Charles River. But there is another Boston: gritty, grimy, blue-collar. And another river, black, cold and predatory — the Mystic River, from which Clint Eastwood's film takes its name and reaches its climax.
The story begins in the 1970s with an incident which scars three youths for the rest of their lives.
Flash forward to the present and one of the three, Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) is troubled, can't find regular work, fears for his son, can't find security in his relationship with his wife, Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden). Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn, above) is a firecracker, runs a convenience store, has a 19-year-old daughter, Katie, by his first wife, and two girls by his second (Laura Linney). Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) has become a famous detective uptown.
When Katie's body is found in a park, Sean and his partner, Whitey (Laurence Fishburne), investigate the brutal murder. Suspicion falls on Dave, while Jimmy is tempted to take the law into his own hands.
On one level, Eastwood's 24th movie is a record of police procedure, a CSI or a Law And Order. But there is another strata — a dark, relentless, complex, raw autopsy of relationships, of boys who meet again as men, of fathers and their children, of husbands and wives.
It has been made by a director who, at 73, appears at the peak of his powers, and with a cast of wonderful actors who — in a rare privilege these days — are allowed to develop real characters, largely due to a superb screenplay from Brian Helgeland (LA Confidential). Penn and Robbins deservedly won Oscars.
Perhaps Eastwood and co feel that the movie speaks for itself because there is little on the DVD, apart from a short documentary in which the director and actors discuss the story's themes as key scenes are played.
DVD, video rental July 21
Mystic River
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