 Clint Eastwood's Mystic River , which opens in many major markets tonight (Wednesday), is receiving arguably the strongest reviews of any movie released this year. A.O. Scott writes in the New York Times: "Mr. Eastwood grounds the conventions of pulp opera in an unvarnished, thickly inhabited reality. There are scenes that swell with almost unbearable feeling, and the director's ambitions are enormous, but the movie almost entirely avoids melodrama or grandiosity." Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times calls it, "an overpowering piece of work." Many of the reviews praise the ensemble performances of Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney. (Eastwood directs the film and composes its score, but does not appear in it.) Writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times: "To see strong acting like this is exhilarating. In a time of flashy directors who slice and dice their films in a dizzy editing rhythm, it is important to remember that films can look and listen and attentively sympathize with their characters." But it is Eastwood's film, and he attracts most of the praise. Peter Howell in the Toronto Star says that Mystic River is "one of the finest films of his long career." Michael Wilmington writes in the Chicago Tribune: "Though he's absent from the acting ensemble, we feel his presence in every frame: in the crystal clarity with which the story unspools and the rich interweave of buried emotion." A few critics concede they don't understand their colleagues' acclaim for Mystic River. Joe Morgenstern writes in the Wall Street Journal: "All I could see was ponderous filmmaking that kept calling attention to itself, and excellent actors giving self-conscious demonstrations of serious acting." |
