Just so...so bad

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I've just wasted 2hr and 18min of my life + the time required to write this comment.....

The lives of three men who were childhood friends are shattered when one of them has a family tragedy. Mystic River is another directing triumph for director and actor Clint Eastwood since his drama not only it's effective but it's also realistic plus one of the best scenes of the film it's easily Sean Penn's reaction to his daughter's murder and it's just so powerful and dramatic. Kevin Bacon and especially Tim Robbins were also very good and the twist in the end was definitely smart to say the least. It's a movie that i highly recommend you to see. (10/10)

Loved the tone and mood of the movie at first. But it's a sub-optimal direction from Clint Eastwood. Looks like characters know many 'little things' beforehand to pave the way to solve the case. Eastwood did a bad job. But not as bad as the Oscar board.

The incredible potency of Eastwood's visual metaphysics (see how the camera so often in his work hovers from above like some perverted God's eyeview that watches but never interferes) meets the substantial (both existential and political) crosscutting (the aesthetic breakthrough of this entry of his) of children/adults perpetually engulfed in their sins. The nightmarish web is further complexed by the no less than four females of the story (and the ghosts of two more, adding to an amazing number of characters for a 138-minute film), building a challenging case of a feminist, anti-feminist and tragedy-like reading of the impossibly dense text. Eastwood dialectics at their most complete - even though perfection is a breath away due to the mechanics of a couple of male performances.