Old West Action

Caught Clint Eastwood's latest directorial effort, Mystic River, the other day. Man, this is an excellent flick. Its one of the best things Eastwood's ever done, and I'm of the school that that's saying a lot. It's probably his best work since Unforgiven, and at least since the underrated A Perfect World. Clint doesn't appear in the film, instead he's working with one of the strongest ensemble casts of recent years, i.e. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden & Laura Linney. What's nice to report is that the lesser parts are just as ably handled. No one delivers a false performance - everyone rings true, as does the look and feel of the film.

I won't rehash the plot of the film, you can find that anywhere. Suffice to say, it's heavy stuff, definitely not a good "date" movie (unless you happen to be dating a child molester, murderer or small time gangster from a blue-collar Boston neighborhood). As I said, everyone's very good, but Penn and Robbins really stand out. It's Penn's best work since Dead Man Walking, and Robbins' best to date. Playing a man with a wound that cannot be healed by time, Robbins' body language is extraordinary. He stoops his shoulders, hangs his head and presents himself as a wounded child in a grown man's body--as if time stopped for him on that fateful day in his youth, while his body marched on. Penn is a walking mass of conflicting emotions, coiled like a cobra, but with genuine pain and loss in his eyes. We're never sure if he's longing to renounce bloodshed forever, or longing to let it seep back into his pores.

Eastwood's direction is sure-handed and smart - he doesn't waste frames showing off, and maintains a certain level of anxiousness and dread from beginning to end. In Mystic River, as in Unforgiven and A Perfect World, violence is presented as a disease, akin to alcoholism. It infests the lives of those consumed with it, and spreads to those around them, innocent or guilty. Eastwood's characters try to back away from the violence in their pasts, but somehow relapse, fall off the wagon and slide back into the blood and brutality that's been the ruin of their lives. The best flick I've seen this year, and deserving of the hype.