All apologies to John Wayne, but Clint Eastwood is easily the most recognizable and influential person involved in the development of Western films. Many would cite his starring role as “The Man With No Name” in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as the performance that single-handedly made Spaghetti Westerns cool on an international scale. However, Eastwood managed to direct some of the greatest Westerns as well once he transitioned to a behind-the-scenes role, and created such classics as The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, High Plains Drifter, and the Best Picture winner, Unforgiven. It would be easy to look at Eastwood’s achievements and simply see it as a catalog of the modern Western’s development, but his filmography includes much more than gunslinger flicks. In fact, Eastwood also directed Mystic River, one of the greatest murder mystery films of all time.
What Is ‘Mystic River’ About?
Based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane, Mystic River centers on three Irish-American friends growing up in Boston who are bonded by a shared childhood incident. When all three of them were out playing on the street, one of them, Dave, was kidnapped, tormented, and tortured by a sexual abuser before being returned days later, and all three boys share a mutual distrust of those in power as a result. In the years since this traumatic experience, Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn), Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), and Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) have remained in Boston but have all grown apart. Dave has become a simple working man but cares deeply for his young. Sean is now a detective for the Massachusetts State Police alongside his partner Det. Sergeant Whitey Powers (Laurence Fishburne), and Jimmy remains in their old neighborhood as the owner of a convenience hardware store. However, Jimmy still has ties to his criminal past that most of his neighbors have kept as an open secret; when his teenage daughter Katie (Emmy Rossum) is murdered, Jimmy swears to find her killer using any means necessary.
Mystic River feels like an anomaly within Eastwood’s filmography. While he often directs Westerns, action thrillers, biopics, and military dramas, an intimate detective story is fairly unique, particularly due to the way he chooses to frame it. Mystic River is an examination of generational trauma and how the sins of the past can come back to haunt us; something as horrific as childhood abuse lingers in the memories of these former friends, forcing them to never look at each other in the same way ever again. Jimmy is shocked by what happened to Dave but doesn’t necessarily give him the support that he needs, making it even more difficult for him to consider that his friend did anything wrong, even when clues suggest otherwise.
While Eastwood’s quickly shot and wrapped productions have earned him some degree of mockery, Mystic River is patient, nuanced, heartbreaking, and very respectful to real victims. Eastwood takes note of male sensitivity and the subtle way that victims are shamed in how Dave becomes an outsider later in life. Westerns may be what Eastwood is best known for, but it’s not the only reason that he’s one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
Eastwood Takes a Slow Approach to the Mystery Genre
There’s a delicacy with which Eastwood had to approach the opening sequence. It’s not clear until later on in the story why this childhood event is so pivotal to the characters’ relationships, and it risked feeling exploitative as a result. There was also the inherently sensitive nature of the sequence that could have easily drawn backlash or been deemed disrespectful. However, the opening moments of Mystic River are absolutely haunting and inspire rarely excellent child performances. Eastwood is able to imply what is happening to Dave without showing it explicitly, and somehow, it becomes even more difficult to consider as a result. Since there’s only a brief voiceover explaining the events, it’s not immediately clear how Jimmy and Sean reacted to their friend’s abuse.
There’s an equal amount of delicacy in the way that Eastwood introduces the characters 25 years later. While the scenes with the child actors are brief, they give a hint of the three men’s distinctions; Jimmy is a bit of a rogue and lacking in empathy, Jimmy is the grounded peacekeeper, and Dave is the outsider. There’s an air of tension between the three performances that shows the somewhat ambiguous relationship between them; while they’re all still recovering in their own ways, there may have been other events off-screen that forced them to live such different lives. Jimmy has become a rebel, untrusting of authority; Dave has become a quiet family man dedicated to his own children; Sean has become a police officer determined to never let anything like this happen again.
‘Mystic River’ Is Full of Incredible Performances and Powerful Characters
Penn gives the performance of his career in a role that justifiably won him his first Academy Award for Best Actor. Jimmy exudes danger in any environment he enters, and Penn’s unnerving confidence in standing up to those that oppose him shows how dominant he is within this tightly wound community. He feels descended from a mobster out of Goodfellas with his polite, yet slightly abrasive way of requesting and demanding things. Nonetheless, all of Jimmy’s flaws disappear once he realizes that his daughter has been killed; Penn’s heartbroken “is that my daughter?” speech remains one of the most powerful sequences that Eastwood ever directed.
Robbins also won his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance, and Dave’s storyline is unquestionably the emotional crux of the story. There’s a heartbreaking tenderness in the ways that Dave interacts with his own child; he is calm and quietly spoken, making it impossible to forget that Dave was around the same age when he was sexually assaulted. It’s a performance that the viewer is instinctively empathetic to, but there are enough clues suggesting that Dave is hiding something to present reasonable doubt. This is heightened when his whereabouts on the night of Katie’s murder are left ambiguous.
It’s a tense moment where the viewer is caught between all three perspectives, wanting them each to be right in their own way. Jimmy wants justice for the brutal way his daughter was killed, Dave is reluctant to talk about something that was clearly traumatic to him, and Sean has to retain his professional duties amidst his loyalties to both of his friends. However, Jimmy’s suspicions of Dave seemingly confirm his worst instincts, as he’s a grieving man in search of someone to blame; he’s forced to consider that Dave is the culprit, but it’s even more difficult knowing the pain that his friend suffered. The danger is that Jimmy has the capability to take that vengeance for himself, forcing the audience to question their loyalties. Without spoiling the film’s twists, it’s safe to say that Penn has never been more terrifying, and Robbins has rarely found such deep emotionality.
Eastwood has never shied away from trying new things, as evidenced by the fact that last year he started production on the final film of his career at the age of 92 with Juror #2. His accomplishments are varied and his output is occasionally flawed, but there’s an earnest reality to his films that most directors can’t capture. With Mystic River, he created his most haunting and enthralling project of them all.