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[Netflix] [IMDb]

Jimmy (Sean Penn), Dave (Tim Robbins), and Sean (Kevin Bacon) grow up in Chelsea, Massachusetts on the banks of the Mystic River. As a boy, Dave is kidnapped and held by a sexual preditor for four days before he escapes. The experience colors the rest of the three boy’s existance. The three drift apart until re-united by the murder of Jimmy’s daughter. Dave is still a neighbor, and Sean is the State Cop assigned to the case (along with his assistant, Laurence Fishburne, as the Sgt.).

The three boys lives follow paths that are radically different, yet are grounded in the inescapeable neighborhood. Sean becomes a cop, Jimmy is a criminal, and it’s never clear to me what Dave ended up as except totally messed up. This is a tragic tale, and well told for the most part, at least until the end when it all falls apart in an ending that seems totally cobbled together. The solution of the mystery is presented in what amounts to little more than a postscript narration, and involved characters only tangentially in the story up to that point.

Some of the interaction between the characters was good, but Sean Penn was too over the top in his tragic loss and lost me. How did that get Best Actor? I mean, only James Lipton would love that character. He was convincing as a thug, though. The music was very heavy handed, so thankfully it was used sparingly. (I was surprized that Clint Eastwood wrote the music, too.)

I’m not familiar with Chelsea, so I can’t say whether it accurately represented the neighborhood or not. My impressions was that it did. I don’t know if it’s co-incidental or not, but Chelsea is really insular and difficult to get to, even from other, nearby towns. Like the Charles, the Mystic is a big river, but unlike the Charles, there aren’t many crossings. Even the Tobin Bridge (the big green one in the backdrop of the movie) passes over Chelsea and you have to double back to get there. That parallels with the insular nature of the neighborhood the characters live in.

would not watch again.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 7th, 2006 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.