Overall you feel Eastwood doesn't get the material at either the high or the low end. He respects this material far beyond its deserts but there is such a thing as behaving too respectfully. In fact, the only scene that has any snap is the one that resembles melodrama, when Dave outplays the cops who have brought him in for questioning and comes across as pretty creepy. Otherwise, the Jimmy and Dave story seems like a botched version of Fritz Lang's suspense classic M (1931) in which Peter Lorre plays a man who abducts, rapes, and murders little girls. The police, desperate to catch him, put a dragnet over the entire town. This disrupts underworld activity to such an extent the criminals start investigating on their own and at the climax are holding a kangaroo-court trial (in which Lorre's confession reveals the desperation of a psychotic killer more piercingly than any other movie ever has) when the police bust in and take the pathetic killer into the official legal system.
In Mystic River Eastwood wouldn't dare make Dave guilty of Katie's death, as Lang did, because then he wouldn't be sympathetic. But he does expect us to sympathize with Jimmy, apparently unaware that we could understand him without liking him if the script had a more sophisticated shape. M is structured to run on the irony of the parallel systems of detection. In Mystic River we have the Savage brothers investigating Katie's death at the same time that Sean and his partner are tracking down witnesses and evidence, but Eastwood drops and picks up these strands according to no discernible narrative pattern. Even without making the elements that lead to Dave's murder fit together in a way that bears some significance, we would respond more if Dave's murder came at the climax of a suspenseful back-and-forth between the cops and thugs. All I felt was relief that this movie, which I swear plays out in longer-than-real time, must nearly be over.
You can find this review and a lot besides at The Kitchen Cabinet.
Alan Dale is author of Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies.
Article comments
1 - Leila
Apparently, you blogs have no more knowledge of molestation than hogs. Forget the tangled interweaving of plot, the grimness of it all, etc. It's a realistically symbolic rendition of the sequelae ("consequences" to you) for many molested kids. They carry it with them forever, and, as a group, die younger than actuarial probabilities for the population-at-large.
It's called "soul murder" by CSA (Child Sexual Abuse) experts. And that's what this film is all about. So stuff all that poppycock where the sun don't shine when you know nothing of the subject you are critiquing.
Respectfully,
Leila
2 - W. C. Parker, Jr. Ph.D.
This is one the most fatuous, intellectually pretentious reviews of a movie or a novel I have ever seen. The review is also notable for its numerous slurs aimed at the director and actors.
The movie of course makes sense in its own frame of reference. Among other things, it suggests that a traditonal pattern of morality may still exist among people who are outside the pale of conventional institutionalized morality.
3 - Sara
In your review, you critique Eastwood and claim that he is too literal. However, I think you are the one that is being too literal in this interpretation of this movie. If you just read between the lines a little bit, you would see how the complexities by which Eastwood guides the audience's mind from being suspicious Dave to being sympathetic to his plight, and from feeling nothing but remorse for Jimmy to disappointment and disgust at how far he will go (all without investigating). I don't think that Eastwood was trying to make Jimmy the "good guy" at all, not even with Annabeth's speech. I viewed the entire ending as a giant, tragic irony, in the fact that the audience assumes that there is meaning behind a crime that turns out to be meaningless; there is irony when we learn that an innocent (well innocent of Katie's murder at least) and deeply vulnerable man was senselessly killed because of Jimmy's (in addition to the audience's) assumption of the significance of Katie's murder; and there is deep tragedy in the fact that no one bothered to understand the man that got stuck in the middle - Dave.
I will admit, the accents got schticky, and Annabeth's character development occurred at an odd time, but I think there is a great deal of melodrama in this film, and perhaps the only reason you did not notice it is because you are guilty of exactly that which you accuse Eastwood of doing - taking the plot too literally. If you just explored the subtleties, the poignancy of this film would resonate with you.
Thank you,
Sara