Movie Review: Mystic River

Originally appeared on Pistonhips

I can't think of another movie I've seen that kept me so intrigued and had me convinced it was a very good film only to have it wind up with the most completely worthless and incongruous ending possible.

Not an ending that I didn't agree with but one that simply didn't fit with anything else that had gone before. You can literally feel the suspension of disbelief fall out from under you in those last 10-12 minutes of the film.

I should be clear in pointing out that this is a very small part of the whole film, after the climax, after such cliched scenes as the cops arriving at the last minute to avert a point-blank shooting. The film had been so good at that point that it didn't matter if scenes like that were cliched. Do these last few minutes render the previous two hours of superb drama void? No, but they do seriously detract from what otherwise is a very good film.

It's as if director Clint Eastwood decided he had to do something so contrary so as to distinguish himself as a serious film-maker

It's as if he, during the time they were filming those scenes that make up the pathetic resolution, was on a David Lynch film-watching binge and decided he would pay tribute to the modern day cinematic surrealist.

It's as if he decided to direct the actors to play their roles in those scenes as if they had all dropped LSD.

A brief synopsis: 3 childhood friends playing in the street, one is abducted and sexually molested over a 4-day period, leaving him emotionally broken. Flash forward 30 years or so and the 3 have all led drastically different lives, no longer friends although they still see each other occasionally in the Boston neighbourhood they grew up in. The character Jimmy Markum (played by Sean Penn), a hard-case who has done time and still has one foot in the crooked lifestyle, has a 19 year-old daughter who is murdered. This is the event that brings the former friends back together.

Dave Boyle (the one who as a child had been molested--played by Tim Robbins), now a broken man, seems to be a suspect for the murder (and Eastwood does everything to make the viewer think this is plausible) while the detective investigating the crime, Sean Devine (played by Kevin Bacon) is the other friend.

Back to the fucked up ending.

What happens in those last few minutes that skews things so badly?

**spoiler**

After having murdered his childhood friend based on the false belief that he had killed his daughter, Markum is sitting on a kerb in the cold light of dawn as detective Devine drives up and informs him that the real killers have been found. The dismissive, blase reaction of both characters (Markum makes it clear he has killed Boyle) is totally ridiculous in light of what has transpired. After the soul searching and gut-wrenching events that have wracked the main characters throughout, this "shit happens," response is bizarre not least for the fact that Devine is a cop who has, together with his partner Whitey Powers, made it clear during the film that they possess the usual loathing that cinematic cops feel for criminals.