Mystic River

Friday, May 1, 2009 16:52 | Filled in 1. MOVIES - OVERVIEW

Cast: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney, Emmy Rossum and Thomas Guiry

Director: Clint Eastwood

Writer: Dennis Lehane and Brian Helgeland

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The film opens with three boys, Jimmy Markum, Sean Devine, and Dave Boyle, playing hockey in the street. While playing, the boys find a part of sidewalk concrete that is still drying. Jimmy writes his name in the cement Sean and Dave follows.

When Dave begins to write his name in the cement a car pulls up and a man who pretends to be a plainclothes police officer gets out, scolds the three boys, and tells Dave to get in the car. Dave looks out the back window of the car as it moves away and sees Jimmy and Sean staring back at him.

When Sean´s and Jimmy´s parents hear about this they agree that something is wrong and begin to look for him. The film then cuts to Dave in the basement of the two pedophiles who took him and then to Dave running away from the house through a forest.

Twenty-five years have passed, and the boys are now grown and still living in Boston. Jimmy is an ex-con running a neighborhood store, while Dave is a blue-collar worker, still haunted by his abduction. The two men are still neighbors and related by marriage.

Jimmy has a19 year old daughter Katie whom is secretly dating Brendan Harris a boy Jimmy despises. She and Brendan are planning on getting married in Las Vegas. Dave spotted Katie one night at a local bar, but she was there with some girl friends. The very same night Katie was murdered.

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Sean Penn, Winning Best Actor at Oscars 2009

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Trivia provided by The Internet Movie Database:

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In Dennis Lehane’s novel, the surname of the characters of Jimmy and his family is Marcus, however in the film, it is Markum.
While researching his character’s occupation, Kevin Bacon had worked in the office of the Massachusetts State Police.
More than 2,000 people who wanted to be extras in the movie showed up at the Boston Teachers Union on 14 September 2002 for the open casting call. Carolyn Pickman of Collinge-Pickman Casting told The Boston Globe a week later that about two-thirds of those trying out would be called to fill a church and a local bar, play spectators at a parade, or walk through other scenes. All types of people from the greater Boston area (and as far away as New Hampshire) attended the call, where they waited in long lines to eventually hand in their applications and get their pictures taken.
Dennis Lehane, author of the novel “Mystic River”, can be seen waving from the back of a convertible in the parade sequence.
The film was shot in 39 days.
The film that Dave watches on TV in the middle of the night is Vampires (1998).
Clint Eastwood narrated the teaser trailer.
Eli Wallach appears unaccredited as a liquor store owner. This is the first time he has worked on a film with Clint Eastwood since the two of them starred in _Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)_.
In the beginning of the movie when a young Dave is thrown into the backseat of the car, a man in the front seat turns around and flashes his ring – a bishop’s ring. The book never indicates that the character was a priest, but it was added to the film since the filming was right in the middle of the priest scandal in the Boston Archdiocese.
The situation at the opening of the movie is based on an incident when, as a child, author Dennis Lehane’s mother castigated him for getting into a car with men who claimed to be plainclothes policemen.
Forest Whitaker was the original choice for Whitey Powers and almost accepted, but had to back out due to other conflicts.
The movie was named as one of “The 20 Most Overrated Movies Of All Time” by Premiere.
Michael Keaton was originally cast as Sean Devine. He had done several script readings with the rest of the principal cast, and he had been doing research for the role with the Massachusetts State Police Department, and living in Boston for several weeks. A month before principal photography was to start, Keaton and director Clint Eastwood got into a huge argument, and Keaton left the project. A week later, Kevin Bacon was cast in the role.
The liquor store scene was shot at Costello’s, a liquor store on Boylston Street in the Back Bay, next to Berklee College of Music. After filming, screen shots from that scene were placed in the front display windows. Costello’s closed in January 2007.
The tune that the band is playing during the parade at the end of the movie is John Philip Sousa’s “Semper Fidelis”, which is Latin for “always faithful”.
At a press conference for his movie Mystic River (2003), Clint Eastwood condemned the Iraq war as a “big mistake” and defended Sean Penn’s visit to Baghdad, saying he might have done the same thing but for his age.

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