“Mystic River” the novel stands apart from usual true-crime fare in its examination of the events that shaped Jimmy, Sean and Dave psychologically.
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That’s all Jimmy needs to spur him to action, and his choices lead up to an agonizing conclusion that packs a Stephen King-styled final blow. Powers (Laurence Fishburne), pegs Dave as a suspect in Katie’s death, and it’s not long before Sean wonders if he’s right. The real trouble starts when Jimmy, unhinged by his grief, hears Dave was the last person to see Katie alive. Because whether she admits it to herself or not, she’s always been a little wary of Dave, who withdraws a little more from his family every day.
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He feeds her a story about fighting off a mugger that she doesn’t quiet her suspicions. On the night of her murder, Dave came home to his wife Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden) covered in blood with a badly injured hand. Then a present-day crime forces them together again: Jimmy’s daughter Katie (Emmy Rossum) is murdered. Twenty-five years later, Jimmy, Sean and Dave know of, but don’t really know, each other anymore. He is a person who has experienced things they cannot comprehend. Jimmy and Sean, even as kids, sense this they know that Dave has been hurt in ways that won’t heal. The three have grown apart because they cannot speak of the tragedy in their childhood, of the day when a man, posing as a cop, abducted Dave and locked him a basement for four days, where he was molested repeatedly. At the center of “Mystic River” are three old friends: Jimmy (Sean Penn), a father and ex-con now running a corner store Sean (Kevin Bacon), a detective with the Massachusetts State Police and Dave (Tim Robbins at his most Oscar-worthy), who ekes out a living with blue-collar work. So much goes unsaid in “Mystic River,” Eastwood’s bleak and darkly beautiful adaptation of Lehane’s novel, that the film simmers with tension. There’s an atmosphere of unease about “Mystic River” that never dissipates by the film’s conclusion, in fact, the unease has grown exponentially. All of the tension has to do with a murder in the past that could have ties to a murder in the present. But as a director? That characterization rings just as true, because Eastwood prefers a hands-off, less-direction-is-more approach. He trusts in his actors’ talent and their instincts he lets them navigate their characters as they choose. Eastwood intuits that, more often than not, the things left unsaid carry more weight than heated confrontations. That’s Clint Eastwood the actor up one side and down the other (even in “Space Cowboys” he didn’t say much).
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We wash them clean.”Īs an author, Dennis Lehane is a man of few words, but he makes every one count twice.