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With Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Friends torn apart by tragedy are reunited after one loses a daughter to murder. Oscar winner for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.

After my review of the book Mystic River, one friend said he would be curious what I would think about the movie once I had finally seen it. I have now seen it. Please, read on.

Here you have an incredible cast working together to portray a story based upon a book that received relatively high praise. Take those two pieces and mash them together. What results is a movie that falls short on plot and even shorter on acting.

First allow me to clarify how short it fell on acting. EVERYONE in this film with the exception of Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn did an absolutely terrible job. The dialogue was forced and raw. Nothing seemed natural from them, any of them; especially the Savage brothers. Kevin Bacon is generally solid in any role he is given. Sean Penn absolutely blew me away. The passion he brought to this role absolutely sold me on his being Jimmy, not him playing Jimmy. Maybe to the chagrin of the rest of the cast his performance made them all look like amateurs.

The casting of Laura Linney (of whom I'm a huge fan. who knew?) and Tim Robbins in the roles they played was poor in the eyes of someone who read the book. I understand now more than ever why authors say that they do not want to option their novels to production studios. They have an idea of the characters in their head that cannot be translated into the best available big name actor. I had a picture of Dave Boyle in my head, Tim Robbins was far from it.

It fell short on plot as any movie will in regards to the book upon which it is based. There is so much detail in a book, detail that as a reader you consider important to the story. Director Clint Eastwood and I do not see eye to eye on which details should have made the movie and which should have not.

The movie was good. The book was better. Yes the disproportionate majority of the time, that will be the case. I was challenged to consider Mystic River as one that may fit in the minority, or at least do the book justice. I will say it did that. I recommend this movie anyway, but more so if you have not read the book.

P.S. There was a question regarding the ending of the movie in the forum thread linked below that was not given enough attention in the movie. The book does a much better job of explaining it, though they do elude to its explanation throughout the movie. You just have to dig a little deeper to find it. I will reply to that question there to avoid leaving any spoiler information in plane view.

P.P.S. Another complaint about the movie is regarding Sean Devine's (Bacon) wife. In the book he receives the same voiceless phone calls yet you are never sure it is his wife calling as he speculates to his partner. In the movie, the possibility that he is simply living too much in the past is destroyed as there are cut scenes to a woman on the other end of the phone apparently trying to gather the courage to speak to the husband on whom she walked out.

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