Let's talk about Mystic River

Yes, that was a little OTT (though this film did show a modicum of restraint), but he played out the whole "wounded animal waiting to die" thing very well.It was all in the eyes. I also liked the kid who played the murdered girl's boyfriend.

One thing about this film is that there were so many people choking back grief or anger or confusion as they spoke that it made for a lot of muttering and indecipherable dialogue. I couldn't understand half of that final scene between Penn and Robbins.

hehe, it kind of makes those pictures look like the "intelligent, 70s-style filmmaking" that they so yearn to be, Tracer!

"Jimmy, whatever his failings, is allowed to stand tall. A desire for revenge -- no matter how illogical, misguided, and ultimately disastrous its premises might be -- is probably the most validated emotion in current American movies and current American politics. It's seen as so noble and righteous that for some it justifies a loss of civil liberties, as well as capital punishment, holy wars, and collateral damage. Even if the wrong people die, at least we know our intentions were good. This is a form of popular psychosis, and it gives even such seemingly antithetical movies as Mystic River and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill -- Vol. 1 a grotesque kind of kinship. I hasten to add that the most winning aspect of Tarantino's frenetic movie is that it doesn't in any way pretend to be grown-up, whereas critics are claiming Eastwood's movie has all the wisdom of his 70-odd years, if not the wisdom of Solomon."

Hah, I'm making a sweeping generalisation and implying "any picture directed by someone known chiefly for their acting career". Pollock is not the best example, but ultimately it's all about unchecked scenery-chewing and endless wallowing in emotional turmoil. See Tracer's comment about Sean Penn.

I disagree here - I don't see the film promoting Jimmy as a tragic hero (nor, for that matter, a pathetic, retarded monster). As he's drinking in the street, there's an element of menace to his future, I worried for his daughters' future. The scene with his wife had ominous overtones - for a moment the idea that the wife had been involved with the daughter's death popped into my head, dealing with the "other woman" in Jimmy's life, say. (Which, of course, would have been cheesier and more melodramatic.)

I think that underscores my problem with a lot of reviews that focus on moral/ethical dimensions to a work - often those lines are vague. Rosenbaum seems to be willfully reading into the film what he wants to see, just as much as the over-praising critics he chastises.

I was also confused how Kevin Bacon's girlfriend or whoever she was suddenly showed up at the parade too, wasn't she supposed to be in Manhatten? Wasn't the parade the same morning as he appolgised to her?

Yes, that's what I was wondering!

i liked it a lot better when i was watching than afterwards...my appreciation really decreased thinking about it. but feeling this film was different. yet it was exactly this reason that i realized why i was somewhat intrigued by it while it was playing: it held me in a particular mood, like a death grip, a grasp of emotion - unpleasant emotion - for quite a while, without making me lose interest. so it was good in that buildup, the tension, all that seemed to be working, as did the performances, especially of tim robbins' wife whose name i'm forgetting.

but when i *thought* about it afterwards, or even during the last third, it began to seem overblown. and just...somewhat empty. it's almost as if this was a message film in a way, telling us something we already know (abuse = bad). i just thought of it as being somewhat uninvolving and disappointing after it was all after, despite how i once got a but misty-eyed in the middle. the totally ridiculous "Lady Macbeth"ish lines of Laura Linney's character that seemed to come out of nowhere in the end as she's humping Sean Penn, did not help. that was almost laughably awkward...we didn't even know anything about her character, so this "we will RULE this town" tidbit didn't seem to make much sense...

and maybe thats my problem with the premise of this movie as well, and maybe why i didn't feel the powerful emotions evoked by its trgedy after it stopped playing, why nothing stayed with me (except for what i thought was *wrong* with its pacing) - we don't know enough about the character of the daughter in the first place to think of her death as a horrible tragedy, and since the one charcater who we get to know who is guilty doesn't face any consequences, it doesnt feel like it's saying anything, really. i also had the same problem w/ In the Bedroom - i didn't know anything about the son! you took the law into your own hands, okay thats great! why should i CARE?

so in all i think it's a mixed bag - pretty adequate, but needed more purpose and tightening - not insufferable, butotnearly as great as all the critics who are apparently wet for eastwood are saying

Yeah, he kind of nods in acknowldegement.

Tim Robbins' character's wife was played by Marcia Gay Harden, who won an oscar for the aforementioned Pollock.

One of my friends didn't like it at all because (she says) she figured it all out halfway in, which shows how you can totally watch this movie as an episode of "Law & Order" (though it'll suck if you do that). I liked it. Great camera placement.

Anyway, I'll stand up for it.

There are some flaws (agreed on the Lady Macbeth thing -- way too heavy-handed), but it definitely captured the banal, mundane way that opportunistic child abuse can occur. It did okay with the feelings surrounding that (Tim Robbins was surprisingly good, but the vampire-watching and the wolf metaphor/speechifying could've been subtler), and it trashed the horrible (as in cruel) notion that abused kids will grow up to be abusers (those characters who seemed to believe this were proved wrong).

For some reason, the scene that sticks with me is the one where Robbins sits with Penn out on the porch at the wake. I don't know why, but it was heartbreaking at the time, and I'm sure it would be even more heartbreaking with full knowledge of subsequent events.

It also captured that ambivalent sense of cloying yet comforting community, the Irish Catholic hermetically sealed claustrophobic world.

Great acting for the most part.

The relationship between the two homicide cops was great.

Oh, another flaw -- how did Robbins' character manage to outsmart the cops so easily (the stolen car defence)? Especially since his self-preservation instincts seemed otherwise pretty much nonexistent?

The movie was tough to watch. It was pretty much unremittingly sad. How would Robbins' on fare? The son of "damaged goods", raised fatherless and with a mother racked (potentially destroyed) by guilt and already marginalized in their community? I found that I didn't want to think about this.

(Re: spoilers -- thanks.)

No one seems to think Jimmy was a tragic hero, or absolved of his actions.

Likewise, I don't see the film as saying "revenge is OK," (and thus standing up for America's wars and blah blah blah) - I see it as "revenge is futile and soul-destroying." Jimmy has been destroyed, to what extent we don't know, by his two acts of revenge. Dave was ultimately destroyed because of the way he took out his revenge on the child molester - if he hadn't been bruised and slashed, no one would mistake him for the killer. On and on and on.

Smoove B would approve.

No one except Jimmy (and his wife). I agree that all that Lady Macbeth stuff was pretty tacked-on, and I get the feeling that this whole thing was more developed in the book (anyone read it? is it any good? I'm guessing it's probably not much). But it did all lead up to the final shrug, which to me made Jimmy even more of a triumphantly tragic figure. He knew what he did was completely wrong, but he forgives himself completely, even if we don't. He's a repulsive but compelling character, and his belief in himself isn't shaken. Which I guess makes him a total Bush American.

Having said that, I have to say I'm a sucker for these kinds of films, and found this just as riveting as a great old NYPD or Hill Street episode. The sudden outbreaks of "acting" (esp. Laura Linney's Lady Macbeth sppech) were pretty nauseating, but I don't think they bogged the film down too much. No classic, but far and away the best mainstream film I've seen in some time.

when t robbins got in the car w/ those savages/whatever and looked back, through the rear window, it should have had big, white text along the bottom or a voice over saying 'he is in the car, again.'

I enjoyed Mystic River but like most had trouble w/ the end. I like how, for a Hollywood movie, Eastwood didn't go easy on the victim. Robbins character (and I thought his performance was amazing, particuarly when he got drunk in the bar towad the end) was pretty much doomed from the time he was molested. No on really wanted to associate with him, love him, understand him. Which is harsh. His wife lost faith in him and to his neighborhood buddies he was pretty much a piece of trash, easily forgotten. The In the Bedroom comparison occured to me, though I think this was a lesser movie b/c it was so much more heavy-handed.

I ought to tune into ILX movie discussions more...in school, my friends who are interested in movies tend to see themselves as Great Film Authorities so if I disagree about whether a movie was good, or incredibly great, and say so, it's "Oh what do you know, you've only see like two movies ever." Ok, fine, I'll shut up and agree or pretend I'm dumb.

And you all pretty much agree with everything I thought. Next time I go to the video shop, I'm taking the laptop and searching relevant threads before parting with my cash.

heavy-handed, it was.
when t robbins got in the car w/ those savages/whatever and looked back, through the rear window, it should have had big, white text along the bottom or a voice over saying 'he is in the car, again.'

I knew it was going to be one of those films when they went from the past into the future and grown-up Dave was wearing a baseball cap like young Dave in case you couldn't tell which young kid was growing into which adult. The whole thing had nine-foot-high neon lights pointing you to plot "intricacies" for idiots.

At the time, I thought it was...dull, maybe; I don't quite remember. I didn't care for it, in any case. I liked it a little more this time, as I expected I would. (My reactions towards such films are almost always tempered a little years later; basically, I just don't care as much anymore.) I liked Bacon and Laurence Fishburne (who I thought got progressively sillier in the Matrix movies--this was the Laurence Fishburne of Boyz n the Hood and Class Action who used to be so good). It's okay that Robbins won awards; he gives a very unusual performance. And as a procedural, it's pretty good.

But: the one bit of wild over-acting from Penn that stayed with me over the years ("Is that my daughter?") is still there and still made me wince. The stuff with Bacon's wife is quite clumsy and unnecessary. And the ending--Linney's speech, Bacon's gesture at the parade--kind of comes out of nowhere.