Sometimes overacted, sometimes taxing, but pretty intense through and through.

I have to say, I was pretty disappointed by Sean Penn’s performance early on in the movie, but it did grow on me. As soon as he started taking control of the situation, I started loving him in this film.

It’s a pretty well constructed movie, minus a few scenes that could have been cut (the parade scene for example). The way information is revealed to different people at different times is what drives the intensity up.

I think that Kevin Bacon is sneakily the best performance here. He probably doesn’t get credit because it’s a much less showy party but I found it more believable.

Characters are constantly confronted…

“We bury our sins here, Dave. We wash them clean.”

Mystic River and Unforgiven are my two favorite Clint Eastwood films and depending on which one I see last I tend to put in first place. Right now I’m inclined to declare Mystic River as Eastwood’s best film, but that is subject to change anytime (perhaps even before I finish writing this review). Nominated for six Academy Awards, the film won two: Sean Penn for Best Actor in a Leading Role and Tim Robbins for Best Supporting Actor. I was rooting for Brian Helgeland’s wonderful screenplay adaptation from Dennis Lehane’s novel, but it lost out to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Helgeland had previously won…

A tale of two movies that as often happens in Eastwood's work shine a light into each other. One, the big tragedy with all its fireworks, call it the Penn/Robbins film, the other, the stoic grunt police investigation with Bacon and Fishburne. The first one got the Oscars (literally) and most of the attention at the time, but it wouldn't work without the other as Bacon's performance, the closest an Eastwood movie has to someone else imitating him (and to a large extant an echo of Eastwood's own work in A Perfect World) is not only the best in the movie (and one of the best ones in any of his movies), but in its functional withdraw with those tired…

Such a disappointing ending to an overall underwhelming film. Jimmy’s character is basically a glorified fucking asshole who thinks that he’s the judge, jury, and executioner in any moral dilemma. Nothing wrong with a character like that, except you shouldn’t have a fucking monologue delivered by his tone deaf wife justifying his behavior in the name of “love” and calling her trash ass husband a king. The glorification of Jimmy’s character is not the only lose end of this film, the rest of the ending sequence and character motivations feel just as broken. Not to mention that the whole bit about Kevin Bacon’s wife is completely useless and adds nothing to the plot.

I’m just so fucking tired of hyper…

Clint Eastwood A Retrospective - Week 45

When the daughter of ex-con Jimmy Marcus (Sean Penn) is murdered, two of his childhood friends from the neighborhood are involved. Dave (Tim Robbins), a blue-collar worker, was the last person to see her alive, while Sean (Kevin Bacon), a homicide detective, is heading up the case. As Sean proceeds with his investigation, Jimmy conducts one of his own through neighborhood contacts. Eventually, Jimmy suspects Dave is the culprit and considers taking the law into his own hands.

Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins star as three men who shared a childhood trauma that they cannot escape. When they were young boys, two men posing as cops duped Robbins and kidnapped and…

So this baby has been on my Prime queue list for more than two years and as Amazon was removing it from their platform this year I thought I would finally jump in and give a watch. Now, I have to point out that I have been aware of this movie for most of my life, I still remember seeing the trailer constantly playing on the Pay Per View channel on my cable network as well as other cable channels and the poster for this movie is simple, yet so memorable it sticks with you for years.

In terms of the movie itself, this was another solid entry in Clint Eastwood filmography. All the fade outs were a bit too…