Mystic River

             Mystic River (2003) is the film that brought Clint Eastwood back in  The Best Director criteria not shadowed by Unforgiven. This film is all it's own. Mystic River revolves around the wonderfully immoral want of revenge and actions and consequences of violence. Jimmy, Sean, and Dave, childhood friends living in Boston reunite once again when Jimmy's daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum) is beaten and murdered. Jimmy has taken time in prison in the past and is willing to forget his old ways but once someone touched his daughter, all hell breaks loose. Sean (Kevin Bacon) is a homicide detective who has been assigned to the case of Katie Markum along with his partner Whitey Powers (Laurence Fishburne). Dave Boyle, a once kidnapped and sexually molested kid who ran away and is forever haunted by vampires and werewolves because of his abduction, becomes a suspect in the case when Sean finds that he had blood on his hands the same night of Katie's death. Katie's boyfriend, Brendan, is questioned also because the gun that was used to kill Katie was used by his father, "Just Ray" during a liquor store robbery in the 80's.

           Jimmy gets the motive that Dave must have killed Katie because Dave's wife, Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden), who is also Jimmy's cousin, tells him that Dave's behavior has been strange ever since the night of Katie's murder. The whole story from the this point on is perfectly juxtaposed to make the audience question who really committed the murder because Sean, with the motive of Just Ray's gun being used by either of the sons, and Jimmy tracking down Dave and finally setting him in a bar to get drunk so then he'll tell the truth, makes this a film a classic tragedy. We believe Dave killed Katie Markum because he fits the description of the murderer. The story makes a tight U turn when Brendan sits at the table in the kitchen and starts to question his brother, his apparently has the inability to speak. Brendan then targets his brother's friend and beats him. At the same time, Jimmy gets Dave so drunk that he confesses to killing a person but he didn't kill Katie. You learn that that night he beaten on the head of a father with a child prostitute in his car. Jimmy then says that if he confesses to the murder of his daughter than he'll let him go on his marry way, ( Jimmy and his brothers took him to the bank of Mystic River and won't let him go until they get a confession). Though Dave confesses to Katie's murder but he knows that he didn't, Jimmy stabs him in the stomach and shoots him in the head then throws his body in the Mystic River. Jimmy later is told by Sean that the murderers confessed and is asked where he last saw Dave because he needed to be questioned about a case of a known dead pedophile. If only he would've gotten to him faster.

            The main message this film is trying to portray is that violence and revenge has serious consequences inflicted on the human mentality. Anything that could be anymore unforgivable than molesting a child should get what they deserve. Any damage inflicted on a human mentality stays damaged, only if the conflict is too great to handle. This message is almost similar with Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992). For example, all main characters are affected by the murder of another, the amount of violence was made to create more of an emotion than that of an action being done to fix something. And also the violence inside the human mind was more reverant than in Unforgiven. Clint Eastwood does an amazing job of creating opposite symmetry at the beginning and the end of the film. To elaborate, in the beginning scene, Jimmy, Sean and Dave are all playing road hockey and stumble upon a wet cement block and are experiencing childhood, until Dave is kidnapped and his child like soul will never be visible again and he escapes and runs away from the werewolves and vampires. At the end of this film, Eastwood shoots a parade in progress and that is a symbol of youth, Being at a parade is where you should hang out with your friends and be a kid because a parade is centered around young people. What makes the ending "opposite symmetry" is now that Dave Boyle is dead, all his friends and widowed wife are speechless with tragedy. Celeste, in the meantime, is looking for her son, who looks like, is lost.

            There is no CGI or special effects done in this film. The need for any of this technology would have been waste paper in the trash can. There are some viewers who thought that is was the most depressing movie ever made and for another reason, they gave this film a 4 out of 10, even 0 out of 10. Yes, the genre isn't a lot like all the youth likes in a movie, it's a drama, it's supposed to be depressing but it also shows that this can happen to anyone, anywhere, at anytime. Mystic River also throws out another message of safety first. Never talk to strangers, and make sure that if the man says he's a police officer, he wouldn't be that voilently persuasive.