I'm sorry, but this is NOT a great movie. And I don't know WHICH movie all those critics who hailed were watching, but it wasn't Mystic River. This movie had a lot of potential but if fell short, and here's why I think it did: (WARNING - If you HAven't seen the movie yet, I suggest not reading the specifics of my post because I will get....specific, and it may give away some "things")
First of all what the hell was the deal with that subplot of Kevin Bacon's mysterious wife on the phone who didn't talk. Cut that whole thing out! Then out of nowhere she comes back to him and at the end everything is Okay. This whole thing was pointless, and it was badly directed. Very campy. That was my fisrt turn-off.
Then there were the campy Dave flash backs when he was telling that story to his son in bed. I hate when directors spoonfeed the audience to make connections with flash-backs. Let us figure it out on our own, Clint.
But the worst part is the ending: If you are gonna make the mute kid the murderer, you have to set it up a lot better. It came out of nowhere!! It tried to make this clever twist at the end, and it was not st up well enough, it was being clever for the sake of being clever. And I think it's cheap that there were two murders on the same night in the same area of town. Maybe that's possible, yes, but WE NEVER heard about the other death of the pedophile. That's too unbelievable to me.
Overall, I was very excited about seeing this movie, and I think its had potential, but didn't come through for me. Sean Penn, however, is brilliant in this role. Very strong acting performance from him. He NEVER gives too much away, and just a facial expression from him says a million words to me. But this tried to be a quiet movie like In The Bedroom. It just doesn't match up to that. In the Bedroom was quiet and it didn't rely on clever plot twists, it just simply breathed with life. Mystic River was suffocated with bad interpretations of the novel, I think. And also, I think the critics are hailing this movie, because there's slim pickins' out there this year, with the exception of Lost in Translation and School of Rock.
to Eastwood and the script!