Word: mystical
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...Mystic River--written by Brian Helgeland, from the Dennis Lehane best seller--begins on a Boston street in the late '70s. Three boys are fooling around when a man who seems to be a police detective orders one of the boys, Dave, into a car. For days, Dave is held captive and sexually abused. A quarter-century later, all three of the old pals bear scars. Dave (Tim Robbins) is not so much the walking wounded as the walking dead, a zombie with a caring sadness. Sean (Kevin Bacon), now a cop, watched his wife walk...
...Grams, which won Penn the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival, traces a circle of pain similar to the one in Mystic River. Paul (Penn) is a math professor whose life is saved by a heart transplant. He learns that the heart came from a man killed with his two daughters in a hit-and-run accident. He joins the man's widow (Naomi Watts) in seeking out the driver (Benicio Del Toro) and considering whether the inadvertent killer should live...
...Mystic River's story is told in Eastwood's straight-shootin' fashion, while 21 Grams, written by Guillermo Arriaga, jumps like an antsy first-grader from one plot strand to the next. Neither film, despite what you might have heard, is within shouting distance of a masterpiece. Gonzalez Inarritu's English-language debut lacks the zigzagging drive of his Mexican hit Amores Perros and taxes credulity with its pileup of fatal coincidences. Mystic River has a case of wandering accents (sometimes South Boston, sometimes West Hollywood) and plods toward its conclusion more like a tired cop than a cunning detective...
...says. "It's easy to be the figurehead of the false courage by encouraging and leading revenge. But I sensed that these two directors were not interested in just dazzling with the ugliest parts of humanity and the quick fix." Penn loved the camaraderie of the Boston location where Mystic River was shot. He also liked Eastwood's relaxed control on the set, the director's ability to get first-take perfection from some very serioso thespians, including co-stars Linney, Laurence Fishburne and Marcia Gay Harden...
...applaud; his dark psychic energy can lead viewers to admiring him rather than understanding the character. That's why roles that allow him to strut his rough anxiety--as in Dead Man Walking and Sweet and Lowdown--are his catnip. Brooding, conflicted, R-rated character studies like Mystic River and 21 Grams: these are natural Sean Penn films...