NOT DEEP DISH, BUT MYSTIC JUST THE SAME

Just so we can avoid any confusion, I want to say a few words about Mystic River - and not Mystic Pizza, which was a movie ten years or so ago with Julie Roberts. This movie is directed by Reptile Skin Man, Clint Eastwood- who looked like he was in the process of shedding in last year's Bloodwork and everytime you see Clint, you would silently utter under your breath- please, the make up is not helping and no way is the theory plausible that at the decrepit old age of 75 that he is still scoring with the young ladies anymore. But luckily, this time around Clint has decided to spare us all with the septuagenarian scares and has proven that maybe his talents lie better these days behind the camera rather than in front of it as he proves to us in this adaption of Dennis Lehane's novel, Mystic River. Not only that, Clint actually composed the score himself. I mean, as hard as it may seem to picture Dirty Harry jotting down quarter and eighth notes on manuscript paper - the score hauntingly sticks in your craw until the fade out.

Clint unravels a story that starts off something that's reminiscent of Stephen King's Stand By Me and winds up being a big screen version of the Sopranos. It's a peculliar amalgamation - but gosh darn, it's magnificent - from the breathtaking pan across the water to it's amazing performances from the ensemble cast. Sean Penn's Sean Markum almost makes Tony Soprano look like a lethagic kitten and I swear, Tim Robbins's performance as David Boyle is creepiest since he did that whacked out film about a terrorist next door neighbor - whose title escapes me at the moment.

It starts out innocently enough as a flashback of three kids playing a game of street hockey until one kid gets kidnapped by two men posing as a cop ...and a priest and taken to a remote area until he escapes four days later. But now we cut to the future and the boy has grown to to look like Tim Robbins and David still has visions of that incident. We are to assume that David has a handle on things. Sean Penn's Jimmy Markum has spend a little time in the joint, but is reformed and has a family with three girls- the youngest is going for communion, and is owner of the neighborhood market somewhere in the suburbs of Boston. However, one night Jimmy's oldest daughter doesn't come home one night- and incidently, David Boyle shows up at his house late at night in front of wife Marcia Gay Harden with blood on his hands. Kevin Becon's Sean Devine, the last of the three has gone on to be a homicide detective who is assigned to find Jimmy Markum's oldest daughter. And the three are reunited in a most unusual manner and they've managed to stick around in the same town after all these years.

There's really not so much in the action dept, but there is a threshold of suspense to keep one entralled considering the calibre of the performances - much like the Sopranos is these days. So there is plenty of Oscar to go around .

Go see it.

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Coat