Mystic River Reviews
Top CriticIt is in many ways Eastwood's tightest movie for some time, and certainly his darkest since Unforgiven; indeed, the ending offers as corrosive an assessment of the limits of American justice as anything in his career.
Sean Penn is so frighteningly good in this movie that he outdoes even the best of his earlier work.
Works as a straight-up detective story, and the acting is often breathtaking.
| Original Score: 4/5
Too depressing to fill audiences with delight, but it does seem to validate questionable attitudes, especially an indifference to the suffering of innocent people and a willingness to shoot first and ask questions later.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Solid, rarely showy performances, meticulously recreated detective work and moments of pure unadulterated grief accent this whodunit, a movie that will have those who haven't read the book fooled for much of its length.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Contains so many layers that you'll want to see it more than once. It's one for the memory books.
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| Original Score: A
There is depth in this movie, and fine acting. But even more intriguing, there are questions... questions with no clear answers.
| Original Score: B+
The experience of being so absorbed in a movie and the lives of the people in it, of trusting a director and a writer and actors to take me places completely unexpected, is so rare that I savored every unexpected turn and twist.
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| Original Score: 4/4
A solid whodunit, with disturbing, provocative, take-home insights into human nature.
A masterpiece of the first order.
Deals with themes Eastwood has often explored before, but never so delicately or with as much sad wisdom: The way in which our past haunts our present, the lasting repercussions of violence and the cruel inexorability of fate.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
It is an impressive movie masquerading as an important one.
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| Original Score: B
Eastwood has handed Penn the role of a lifetime, and the actor scorches the screen with his anguish and angry vengefulness.
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| Original Score: A-
Eastwood and his terrific cast leave you shaken in ways that matter.
| Original Score: A-
For all its missteps, Mystic River gets the big things right: It turns you inside out with grief.
A deeply textured drama in which the sins (or perceived sins) of the past weigh heavily on the present.
If Mystic River is just a bit overplayed, a tad too highly pitched, it still resonates with grief and fury and feeling.
The movie eloquently mourns the death of innocence and friendship. It also is a showcase for six stunning performances.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
The acting throughout is exceptional, rooted in observed realism, but suggestive of more mythical agents at work through the lives of human beings.
| Original Score: 3/4
The film and its actors are at their best when acknowledging the tragedy of inarticulate men banging their heads against fate.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Eastwood's most soulful, and most organic, movie.
It is a movie to closely watch and to savour; the confident direction and the flawless ensemble performances are, quite simply, worthy of Oscars.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Mystic River is full of details that stay with you.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
An adult drama rich in emotional textures.
| Original Score: 3/4
At nearly 2 1/2 hours, Mystic River proves that a mystery need not be taut to be riveting.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Eastwood's best direction since Unforgiven and arguably the best, most mature work of his career.
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| Original Score: 5/5
A riveting story with complex situations and extremely well defined characters.
River leads moviegoers on a suspense-filled, sometimes painful adventure marked by great performances.
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| Original Score: 4/4
A powerful tale of crime, guilt, and punishment.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
This is an extremely well-crafted and powerful film with searing performances from the all-star cast, most notably Sean Penn and Tim Robbins.
Resonates long after the last fade-out.
A haunting, ambitious but ultimately flawed film that treads some of the same somber moral territory director Clint Eastwood explored in Unforgiven.
| Original Score: 3/4
Mystic River is the rare American movie that aspires to -- and achieves -- the full weight and darkness of tragedy.
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| Original Score: 4/5
What you end up admiring about the film is its literacy, its authenticity ... and its refusal to let us down easily.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Eastwood's 24th directorial feature is his most ambitious in a decade.
A movie of startling power and intimacy.
| Original Score: 4/4
Mystic River is a complex, deeply ambiguous study of lifelong ties, moral accountability and the flukes of destiny.
A crisp, well-made, visually astute film that will provoke and divide [Eastwood's] admirers.
