Mystic River

Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, 2003) Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon

With a childhood tragedy that overshadowed their lives, three men are reunited by circumstance when one has a family tragedy.

This is much too long and too complicated. It's a single murder mystery (in one of its aspects) which takes 138 minutes to solve.

Does anyone else have trouble telling Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon apart? It should help that Robbins is 7 ft tall - but that was the only difference I could see. Sean Penn is incapable of subtlety. Laurence Fishburne is still resting on his Matrix and Apocalypse Now laurels, and puts no effort at all into this. Also, he's got fat and quite unattractive. Laura Linney's mind was elsewhere - but then she looks exactly the same in all her movies. I did have a few defensive drinks while watching this, but I still think it's tedious. Eli Wallach was good.


Garry Gillard | reviews | New: 21 May, 2017 | Now: 18 July, 2020