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Mystic River
Warner Bros.

5.4 based on 42 reviews Read critic reviews How did we calculate this? based on 235 votes Read user comments Rate this movie

FILM:

• Absolute Power
• Bird
• Blood Work
• Changeling
• Flags of Our Fathers
• Letters from Iwo Jima
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
• Million Dollar Baby
• Space Cowboys
• The Bridges of Madison County
• True Crime
• Unforgiven

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• Official Studio Site

MPAA RATING: R for language and violence

Starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, Kevin Chapman, Laura Linney, and Adam Nelson

As the investigation of the death of a young woman tightens around three old friends, and ominous story unfolds that revolves around friendship, family and innocence lost too soon. (Warner Bros.)

GENRE(S):	Drama  |  Mystery
WRITTEN BY:	Brian Helgeland Dennis Lehane (novel)
DIRECTED BY:	Clint Eastwood
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 8, 2004  Video: June 8, 2004  Theatrical: October 8, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	137 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director (Clint Eastwood), Best Adapted Screenplay (Brian Helgeland), and for lead actor Sean Penn (who won the award) and supporting actors Tim Robbins (also a winner) and Marcia Gay Harden. Penn won a Golden Globe for his performance, and the film also received a Globe nomination for Best Picture. Named Best Picture of 2003 by the National Board of Review and Boston Society of Film Critics. One of the AFI's 10 best films of 2003.

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Eastwood directs Mystic River with an invigorated grace and gravitas. This is a true American beauty of a movie, a tale of men and their bonds told by and for adults who value the old-fashioned Hollywood-studio notion of narrative.

100

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Mystic River is the rare American movie that aspires to -- and achieves -- the full weight and darkness of tragedy.

100

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Clint Eastwood pours everything he knows about directing into Mystic River. His film sneaks up, messes with your head and then floors you. You can't shake it. It's that haunting, that hypnotic.

100

The New Yorker David Denby

As close as we are likely to come on the screen to the spirit of Greek tragedy (and closer, I think, than Arthur Miller has come on the stage). The crime of child abuse becomes a curse that determines the pattern of events in the next generation. [13 October 2003, p. 112]

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

To see strong acting like this is exhilarating. In a time of flashy directors who slice and dice their films in a dizzy editing rhythm, it is important to remember that films can look and listen and attentively sympathize with their characters. Directors grow great by subtracting, not adding, and Eastwood does nothing for show, everything for effect.

100

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Mystic River is classic Eastwood, classic noir. If there is still some doubt about whether this one-time macho star is actually a world-class moviemaker, Mystic River should end the argument for good. One of the best American movies of the year, crisply well-crafted and beautifully acted.

100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A major American motion picture, an overpowering piece of work that involves some of the most basic human emotions: love, hate, fear, revenge, despair. Directed by Clint Eastwood with absolute confidence and remarkable control.

100

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

Chilling, superbly acted.

100

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Moves along its course and overflows at its climax with that indefinable but unmistakable assurance of a master filmmaker who knows just what he wants to say, is in total command of his medium and is in no mood to make any compromises.

100

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

This kind of quiet ambiguity, avoiding easy answers to complex human conflicts, is all too rare in American movies.

100

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Eastwood's elegantly directed Mystic River, a deeply textured drama in which the sins (or perceived sins) of the past weigh heavily on the present.

100

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Perhaps the greatest, most affecting articulation of the theme Eastwood has been exploring since 1990's "White Hunter Black Heart": how violence--real violence, not movie violence--perpetrated and experienced, can erode and/or obliterate the human soul.

100

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

The performances are uniformly remarkable.

100

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Eastwood has crafted one of the most powerful American dramas in years.

90

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

If Mystic River is just a bit overplayed, a tad too highly pitched, it still resonates with grief and fury and feeling.

90

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Mystic River is hard-boiled beyond toughness: It's so tender the skin falls away from the bone. It's Eastwood's most soulful, and most organic, movie.

90

Variety Todd McCarthy

This full-bodied adaptation of Dennis Lehane's involved and involving 2001 bestselling crime novel about old friends in Boston's working-class Irish neighborhood finds Clint Eastwood near the top of his directorial game with a cast of first-rate actors.

90

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Sean Penn is so frighteningly good in this movie that he outdoes even the best of his earlier work.

90

Newsweek David Ansen

A haunted thriller of disturbing power.

90

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

In his best film since "Unforgiven," Eastwood ultimately lets observations on character, community, and the tidal patterns of tragedy shoulder a burden an ordinary murder mystery never could.

89

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Mystic River asks plenty of questions but rarely if ever offers any answers, and certainly no easy ones. If this fine and sorrowful film is what can be expected from our aging cinema icons, here’s to the golden years, dark though they may be.

88

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

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.

88

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

So incrementally does Eastwood's film build toward what seems like an inevitable resolution that when it concludes, you're sucker-punched. You haven't been watching a police procedural, but a Greek tragedy. You haven't been watching a drama about the catharsis of vigilantism, but sitting vigil for a community diminished, and permanently damaged, by violence.

88

USA Today Staff (Not Credited)

River ranks with the best movies Eastwood has directed: "The Outlaw Josey Wales," "Unforgiven" and "The Bridges of Madison County." But this time, the work is strong without his own on-screen presence -- a significant achievement.

88

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The white-knuckle center of the movie is Sean Penn, who gives an utterly raw performance as Jimmy, father of the dead girl. It's one of the few times that a parent's grief has felt real on the screen through all its ugly permutations.

88

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is a powerful tale of crime, guilt, and punishment -- a drama that incorporates elements of whodunit mystery/thrillers and police procedurals with a richly textured three-character play.

80

Slate David Edelstein

For all its missteps, Mystic River gets the big things right: It turns you inside out with grief, and it builds to an act of vigilante murder that is nearly impossible to endure.

80

Film Threat K.J. Doughton

Echoes Eastwood’s previous exploration of true-life violence, “Unforgiven,” by tracing how death and depravity stain one’s life for generations, leaving seeds to take root in each branch of a tainted family tree.

80

Empire Alan Morrison

Two things make Eastwood's task easier for him: a superb cast and a cracking source novel. Dennis Lehane's book is one of the very best thrillers of recent years, richer in Boston detail and closer in character study than anything Eastwood manages to bring to the screen.

75

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The grandest presence here is Eastwood. His directing, like his acting, is minimal: unhurried, spare, unforced, rather somber.

75

Boston Globe Ty Burr

This is at bottom a pulp thriller that strains -- sometimes pretentiously, at other times with gutter magnificence -- to reach the level of basic human truths.

75

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

One of those rare recent films whose emotional power resonates long after you've left the theater.

75

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The acting throughout is exceptional, rooted in observed realism, but suggestive of more mythical agents at work through the lives of human beings.

70

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Where Lehane's novel seethes with emotionally charged subtext, Eastwood's workmanlike direction feels static -- fatally tasteful, embalmed in gravitas -- while his sporadic efforts at dramatic heightening come off as vulgar cliché.

70

Village Voice J. Hoberman

An urban crime thriller of considerable gravitas.

70

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

If he were a more subtle director, it would be a great film; as it is, it's an extremely good one, anchored by the subtly devastating performances of Penn, Robbins and Bacon. The supporting cast is equally good, and blue collar Boston's mean streets take on a beaten-down life of their own.

70

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Arguably Eastwood's most ambitious film since his multi-Oscar winner, "Unforgiven." But it lacks the power and depth of that film's dynamic script by David Webb Peoples.

60

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Little more than the distended first half of a twisty, dark "Law & Order" script.

50

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The performances, especially of Penn and Robbins, are so powerful and detailed (down to the Boston accents) that they often persuade one to overlook the narrative contrivances (particularly the incessant crosscutting), the arty trimmings (including Eastwood's own score), and the dubious social philosophy.

50

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Mystic River wants to be a Bruce Springsteen-like anthem of life and death in blue-collar America. It's no more than a doggerel rendition of poetic injustice.

40

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

If this death-obsessed drama is a classic, then give me potboiling life.

30

Film Threat Phil Hall

The new bad movie from Clint Eastwood which takes Dennis Lehane's best-selling thriller and turns it into an inert mess that clocks in at 137 minutes but feels like 137 hours.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.4 (out of 10) based on 235 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Steven Z. gave it a0:
The most overrated movie of all time. Hideous, offensive, and soul-destroying. The kind of movie that tells you life sucks and everything's awful, and then fakes the evidence. Every plot twist is rigged and unbelievable, every line is ponderous and humorless, and the experience leaves you thinking there's nothing that can be accomplished in life. And don't blather to me about the "powerful acting." The best performances in this movie--the fine, quiet work done by Kevin Bacon, Laura Linney, and Laurence Fishburne--were, of course, the least acclaimed. All the praise and Oscars went to the overdone hamming of Penn, Robbins, and Marcia Gay Harden (who, to be fair, was given nothing to play but scaredy-cat.) It was embarrassing seeing the great Ms. Linney trying to make that bogus Lady Macbeth scene at the end believable. One of those movies that's trying to impress you rather than tell a story, which you're supposed to learn a lesson from. "Life sucks" is not an original message, nor one that will come as a great surprise to many people, but overpraised hack directors always seem to think they're doing something daring by trotting it out.

Dave Z gave it a9:
I should give this a 10, but there are two areas of a film that are most important... the beginning and the end. Great movie overall except the artist didn't know when to put down the brush. Sorry Clint, you should have cut out the last scene, we already got the feeling you wanted us to have and the feeling (of disgust) was wonderful. You pushed it farther than it had to go.

Jack T gave it a10:
I found this film to be one of the most spiritually profound works to come out of the Hollywood studio system in quite some time. Eastwood sorts through the rubble of his characters' lives with an assurance and patience that's reminiscent of his better works. The film has its ciphers (namely Laura Linney's Lady Macbeth) and its fair share of summarizing speeches—but even when it appears as if Eastwood has given up on his characters for a series of red herrings, the lyrical editing of the film's Shakespearean last act plays into the schematic idea that the film's characters are merely fulfilling a predetermined prophesy of hurt. If Dogville is a ravishing autopsy of American terrorism, Mystic River is a heart-wrenching act of worship: a holy observance of the way evil spreads like a pestilence (specifically referred to as vampirism in the film) from the past into the present.

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
A brilliant film and Eastwood's best in my book. A subtle but incredibly powerful look at how three friends are affected by a loss of innocence early on and try to cop with it as adults. It's a shame the film is too subtle for some and even more of a shame that it didn't get any oscars beyond the acting nods.

Alex R gave it a4:
wow, I can find some seemingly good aspects about this film if I try, but come on!.. a 10? Award nominations? I just can’t understand it. It’s a decent movie in its genre. It’s got some good (though pretentious) photography. It’s got those classic Hollywood drama technicalities decently (or even well) performed. It’s got pretty good, if not a bit overacted, performances. And it’s got some dark narrative that succeeds in its tough impact, even when such accomplishment uses pretty manipulative, maybe even pathetic, techniques. I will concede all these positive aspects about it with its, I find, pretty logical counterparts; but I wonder how can anyone overlook all this movie’s manipulative inconsistencies, its huge plot holes that don’t quite serve the movie to become great even in its own genre, or, most importantly, its too little sense or meaning! [***SPOILERS***] It is supposed to be about three characters affected by a single event in their lives, the rape of one of them. Sure, the actual molested kid was greatly affected, but we didn’t see enough of him to understand or even feel like the audience of such effect. About the effect in Penn’s character, I can find a thousand better reasons for him to become what he became other than having a friend raped. And Bacon's character? Please, don’t just cram in a neglected wife just to show he was somehow affected too. So what the heck is this movie about? a crime? You don’t really see anything that is really related to the actual execution of the crime until the scriptwriters finally decided they should tell you which unrelated character did it. What else now? The loss of a child and the effect of such a tragedy? That basically adds to 30 minutes of this long movie to be reason enough for the more than two hours it lasts. The link between these three characters? The movie never plunges deep enough on their relationship or on how exactly the relationship had been scarred by that event (or by any other in their lifetimes), to justify the movie’s existence on such basis. I can accept that maybe they succeeded only a little bit more with the torn and conflicted relationship between Penn and Robbins by the end of the movie, but you barely get to grasp it and it is there in a way that seems to have been manipulatively tossed in to increase the drama). So what else can it be about? the shock factor that the manipulations in the movie can bring? Well I guess that’s the most probable excuse for this movie; and at that it does succeed. But I just don’t see how such a frivolous triumph can be awarded with excellent reviews or even any nomination to script, director, or movie. (I don’t get the nomination for actor either, given that his performance in 21 grams was much better and much more credible than his melodramatic one here. How can people who criticize the more sober yet intentionally and pragmatically self-absorbed The Hours for being too melodramatic, praise this performance or this movie as a whole, just doesn’t make sense to me). In general, this is a decent dark mystery drama with the potential of bringing a rather disquieting effect to the viewer (so don’t expect it to be an enjoyable ride); but it simply lacks sense in almost every possible way. However, if you like to suffer for no logical reason, see this movie. If you like the mystery drama genre, you might enjoy it also. Well… as incomprehensible it might be for me, you might still like it given that so many people do, so you might as well give it a try. As for me, after much thought I can only keep disliking it and just try to stop resenting it for the acclaim it did get.

Frank O. gave it a10:
One of Clint Eastwood's best movies, if not the best. Outstanding cast and direction. Eastwood did a great job with a dark story created by Dennis Lehane. Eastwood stayed true to the storyline.

Bob A. gave it a4:
A noble effort by Eastwood, but ultimately a movie that leaves the audience unsure if they should really care. The editing is disjointing, the solution to the murder mystery is unsatisfying, the twist is shallow and the acting is the equivalent of the lunatics taking over the asylum.

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