Just got done watching this film. Clint Eastwood did a great job with this one, not to mention some great acting from Sean Penn.

well... i was all excited to see a movie shot in places i've been. that was kinda cool.... but BOY OH BOY did they make boston look weird. lol. it was fun recognizing the Gun Room in the BPD (i've been there on a tour). whay didn't they show any cool places?? where normal people go in boston??? lol anyway

it was well directed... excellent acting! i felt the the major problem was the cinematography. it's possible to show ugly depressing areas without making them look like that! it looked like a documentrary. they seemed to be lacking a ND filter sometimes! i dunno... the filming just bugged me. and somehow i didn't identify with any of the characters, i felt the writing might have been a little off. just my 2¢

Just because you didn't identify with any of the characters didnt mean the writing was off, however, that is your opinion and there's no right or wrong but I just believe it would be harder to relate to some of the characters. Sean Penn's character was a store owner who was kind of a small time low-life mobster in Boston, Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne were homicide detectives for a big city, Tim Robbins was a strange guy because of his kidnapping as a child but was also a normal father, the daughter was killed, her boyfriend had a screwed up mother a mute brother and his girlfriend had been murdered.... Not much to relate with if you're just the average american citizen ya know? But that's just my opinion, not right or wrong, just my opinion

i see your points - well put. when i say identify, maybe i should say empathize with. the only people i liked (and had an interest in the luck of) were the cops. i couldn't feel sorry for Sean Penn or Tim Robbins. i didn't even feel sorry for him when he got shot, just angry at his "friends."

oh well - it was still extremely well done despite what i say about it. two acting oscars can't be bad.

I really liked this movie but I thought it over justified its ending. It should have just ended after Sean Pean wife gives him the speach about being king. Instead we get the stupid parade scene where everyone conforms what happened and the lame ending so that he can say "I guess he died that day." But still, the acting is just so powerfull that you really get involved.

I can see where titanium is coming from when he said that the writing was off a bit.

At some points I noticed that two charcters in a converstaion would talk at the same time, and I didn't know what either of them was saying as a result. Some of the lines made me feel like I was watching a reality show, or as titanium said, a documentary. Just a couple of things i picked out.

-Mark

Mystic River was ok for the first half or so, when it presented itself as a well-acted character study about a father's grief, friendship, and childhood trauma. It fell apart during the second half, especially in the third act. Sean Penn's character went from sympathetic to ridiculous--his character in 21 Grams was equally well-acted, but consistently written. As others have observed, the superfluous parade scene destroyed any sense of subtlety the ending might have had... it should have ended with Sean Penn and his bottle of Jack walking off down the street.

I found the ending kind of unsatisfying. That scene at the very end (with the parade) set up some giant surprise ending, but nothing happened.

Yeah i am 50/50 on the parade.. i think it was kind of pointless but then again it did show how life jsut goes on and shows how sometimes your world is ending ( the wife looking for her husband ) while everyone and eveything else keeps moving without you. Still they probobly could have done without it.

Sean Penn was amaazing thats all I have to say... and Kevin Bacon has been top notch recently I think they got a good cast with a pretty good story and it came out pretty damn good.