MOVIE REVIEW | 'MYSTIC RIVER'

Sean Penn delivers a superb performance.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
O CALL CLINT EASTwood's haunting and haunted "Mystic River" the best film released by a major studio so far this year would be an insult and a gross understatement. It's quite simply one of the best American films of the past quarter-century.
A classically structured character piece, "River" looks downright quaint in today's Hollywood with its emphasis on sensation over substance. It also solidifies the 73-year-old Eastwood's stature as one of the contemporary cinema's premier artists.
Based on Dennis Lehane's best-selling 2001 crime novel, "River" tells the story of three boyhood pals who grew up in the same working-class Boston neighborhood.
When one of them (Dave) is ordered into a car by two men posing as cops, Jimmy and Sean stand by helplessly as he's taken away. Escaping four days later after being tortured and repeatedly abused, Dave is a shell of his former self.
Embarrassed by their inaction during Dave's time of need, his friends can't even look him in the eye anymore.
Tormenting plot
Thirty years later, the boys' shared sense of shame comes back to torment them like a sorcerer's curse.
Dave (Tim Robbins), still visibly marked by that traumatic incident from his youth, shuffles through life though in a perpetual fog. Not even his wife, Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden), or young son can rouse him from his stupor.
Ex-con Jimmy (Sean Penn) is now a respected pillar of the community. He runs a successful local market, has a supportive wife, Annabeth (Laura Linney), and is father to three young daughters, the oldest of whom, Katie (Emmy Rossum), has recently graduated from high school.
Boston police homicide detective Sean (Kevin Bacon) has a messy personal life (he's estranged from his wife) and a full caseload.
Except for the occasional polite nod exchanged in passing, the three haven't bothered keeping in touch. All that changes when Katie is brutally killed.
Sean gets assigned the case and the unenviable task of telling Jimmy about his daughter's murder; Dave, who returned home late the night of Katie's murder with blood on his clothes, starts looking like a prime suspect; and Jimmy instructs some of his thuggish associates to conduct their own investigation.
Slowly -- probably too slowly for the video game-destroyed attention spans of some younger audiences -- the events of the past tilt full circle. Lives are irrevocably changed, relationships strengthen or die, and the Mystic River ("We bury our sins here, Dave; we wash them clean") trickling along the outskirts of town just keeps flowing, unperturbed by the emotional tumult.
Captured essence
Oscar-winning scenarist Brian ("L.A. Confidential") Helgeland's terrific screenplay rigorously captures the essence -- indeed, the very soul -- of Lehane's lengthy tome. Much of the pungent dialogue seems directly lifted from the source yet never sounds unduly literary.
And Eastwood has so masterfully captured the book's scruffy Bean Town setting that it becomes as indispensable a part of the story as the vividly etched characters themselves. (Eastwood also composed the film's suitably melancholy score.)
But it's the acting in "Mystic River" that really sticks to your bones.
In a cast literally dripping with potential awards season nominees, Penn reigns supreme with what is quite possibly the finest performance of his brilliant career. Certainly he's never had a role as subtly layered or dimensional as Jimmy before. This loving husband and father harbors such a terrible secret that it just about swallows him whole. Amazingly, Penn never lets us forget his character's humanity, even when Jimmy's violent streak cruelly resurfaces.
Robbins makes the permanently damaged Dave almost unbearably poignant; Gay Harden and Linney provide stellar distaff support; Bacon is as determinedly steely as Eastwood himself back in his Dirty Harry days; and newcomer Thomas Guiry leaves an indelible impression as Katie's grief-stricken boyfriend.
Like "Unforgiven," Eastwood's justly lauded western that swept the 1992 Academy Awards, "Mystic River" has a profound understanding of why death matters. The cost of a human life has never seemed more precious. How ironic that the same man who coined that vigilante rallying cry, "Make my day!", would turn into a poet laureate of cinematic mortality.