A joint review from Elder Statesman John and the Movie Snob.

This weekend we both saw Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood, and we both liked it. Although we find the rhapsodic critical praise for the movie a bit overblown, there is no question that Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon turn in Oscar-caliber performances.

(WARNING: the following review does contain spoilers.) The movie is set in a blue-collar area of Boston. At the beginning, we see Penn, Robbins, and Bacon’s characters as children, playing hockey in the street. Robbins’s character is abducted and sexually abused by two men posing as police officers. He escapes a few days later, but not surprisingly the episode severely damages him and destroys the trio’s friendship. Fast forward 25 years. Bacon is a cop, Penn is an ex-convict running a corner store, and Robbins is, well, it’s not clear what he does for a living, but he is visibly haunted (consumed, even) by the ghosts of the past. Yet, somehow he is married and has a young son. (It is one of the movie’s weaknesses that it makes Robbins's character pretty seriously messed up but gives him a very normal-seeming wife and child.) A new and terrible crime in the neighborhood pulls all three men back together. Great performances by the leads (and by Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney, as Robbins’s and Penn’s wives) elevate the movie well above the mark set by the Law and Order-style plot.

Movie Snob: I was ready to give it a B when I walked out of the theater, but this film has really stayed with me since then. It’s at least a B+, maybe an A-. Still, Unforgiven remains my favorite Clint Eastwood movie. Postscript--Laurence Fishburne gives a nicely understated performance as Kevin Bacon's partner on the Massachusetts State Police.

Elder Statesman: Very good movie, which I recommend. That said, however, it's not pure greatness. Penn and Bacon are superb, as they generally are. I was not as taken with Tim Robbins's performance as some were. I would call it like the Snob: somewhere between B+ and A-.