Mystic River
{5/5} “The reality is we’re still 11 year old boys locked in a cellar imagining what our lives would have been if we’d escaped.”
When Jimmy, Dave, and Sean were kids they wrote their names in wet cement. An official-looking guy caught them and scolded them — he then told Dave to get in his car. Four days later, Dave escaped from his captors. Years later Jimmy’s daughter has been murdered. Sean is a police officer on the case. Something happened to Dave on the night of the murder — there’s no way he could have murdered his friend’s daughter, is there?
Mystic River was released in 2003.
This is a movie that pulls you in with its gripping story and tremendous acting. You can’t take your eyes off the people on the screen.
When something unbelievably horrible happens to you as a kid, it scars you forever. When something horrible happens to one of your best friends, it affects you forever too.
Sean Penn (Milk) plays Jimmy, Tim Robbins (Arlington Road) plays Dave, and Kevin Bacon (Apollo 13) plays Sean. Marcia Gay Harden (Whip It) plays Celeste, Dave’s wife, and Laura Linney (the TV show The Big C) plays Annabeth, Jimmy’s wife. Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix) plays Whitey, Sean’s partner.
In case the liquor store owner looks familiar, it’s Eli Wallach (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).
The movie was directed by Clint Eastwood (Trouble with the Curve). Eastwood also wrote the music, as he did for Changeling. His music is simple but effective.