Mystic River

Mystic River (2003) is adapted from Dennis Lehane's novel, and its subject is not a murder but something that happened twenty five years earlier. Three boys are playing in a Boston street. A car pulls up, the men inside say they are police, and they take one of them, Dave, away. He comes back four days later. Twenty five years on all three are adults. Jimmy's daughter is murdered. Sean is the detective on the case. Dave was near the scene that night and came home covered in blood. What the film is about is not who is guilty but how which boy got into that car determined all three lives. All of them are frozen at that day. Eastwood shoots it cold and at a distance. He also wrote the score. Sean Penn won Best Actor and Tim Robbins won Supporting Actor. Two acting awards from one film is rare. The parade at the end is the most disturbing thing in it: something appears to have been resolved, nobody knows the truth, and life simply continues. Another Lehane novel became Shutter Island. It runs 138 minutes. Good for: crime drama, performance driven films, and Eastwood. Less good for: child abuse is implied and the death of a child is at the centre. The tone is heavy throughout.