By now, shouldn’t we all know better than to fall for movies like this? It’s a pretty simple equation: sturdy direction by a wow-doesn’t-he-look-great-for-his-age filmmaker (bonus points for doing your own score), solid if highly aware performances by a cast of revered actors, and literary source material all cast in an air of studied solemnity are the most basic ingredients for year-end Oscar stew, and each November we get another heaping serving. Clint’s particular variety gains points for its spot-on sense of locale and the best Kevin Bacon performance in recent memory (maybe ever—for me his resuscitation from country-rock mediocrity is the film’s highest virtue), but loses them quickly for grafting a rickety police thriller onto a character study marred with half-baked moral quandary and half-hearted religious symbolism. I don’t believe in the headier aspects of Mystic River any more than I do his other multiple Academy Award winner Unforgiven (is it too early to crown Mystic ?). Both films are so intent on convincing audiences of how deadly serious and important they are that they end up as inert as their creator’s visage. Not to mention that the shades of grey morality they proffer up always seem to end up bleeding back into an uncomfortable black and white. I like Clint better when he loosens up and gets a little weird—A Perfect World, or the ridiculous, yet somehow charming sex ‘n’ jazz montage in Play Misty For Me are both the work of a filmmaker enjoying the process, rather than just trudging grimly through the usual bases. It’s perhaps that sense that most hamstrings Mystic River—we’ve been here before, and seen it all. What’s so special about this version? By the time Clint’s flown us for the umpteenth time over the Mystic in his rented helicopter, he’s managed to foster an odd sense of déjà vu for his own film. Oh wait, I bet that’s supposed to be the kind of visual rhyming that serious filmmakers employ to make a point. I must have just missed it. Mystic River is not a “bad” movie by any means, but when did our standards drop so low that “solid” could be so easily confused with “masterpiece”?
—JR