What a beautiful movie!

Great Film overall

Best movie ever!

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

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.

Mystic River isn't just a whodunnit, it's a crime that effects the town and it's past. With excellent performances from an all star cast, probably Sean Penn's best performance ever.It's a dark mood kinda film, but certainly one of a kind!

The build-up this has is great, it's shot well, it's acted well, the story's interesting, the ending just falls apart. You think the whole movie that Tim Robbins is the one that kills Penn's daughter, but then it throws a twist ending at you that doesn't work. Instead of it being just a sad moment of a man who was abused finally snapping and accidentally murdering someone, it was just a prank gone wrong. It literally pulls a "It's just a prank, bro!" ending. Not only that, but then Penn kills Robbins and finds out like 3 hours later that Robbins didn't kill his daughter. I imagine the ending's there to be some sort of cautionary message about jumping to conclusions, but it's executed so poorly, that it just feels like a misstep to me. It almost feels like they put a sad ending on this to increase it's chances for winning an Oscar, typical "Sad Ending = Oscar Nom" situation. I don't mind sad endings, but I feel like it could've been handled better than this. The movie as a whole is good, the climax just feels kind of rushed and it hurts the final product.

The plot is twisted and implausible to the point where the movie becomes boring and disappointing. I find no trace of sanity or nobility, no beauty, no hint of redemption for any of the characters throughout a movie that unsuccessfully attempts to be profound and originally dramatic.But it's impossible to admire any of the characters, and the ones that perhaps may deserve compassion, are treated unjustly, disrespectfully and grotesquely. Indeed there is something repulsive and disquietingly grotesque behind the moral premises of the story. One perhaps could forgive the inadequacy of such amorality in a story where haphazardness looks plausible, natural, spontaneous and uncontrived. But in such an absurd and unbelievable story one can only conclude that the dramatist is sick, or perhaps just gullibly read too much of Nietzsche.