Mystic River

Mystic River is one of the most harrowing and powerful movies to come out of Hollywood in the past ten years. It offers no easy answers in its portrait of three (now adult and dissimilar) childhood friends in search of closure in the face of tragedy, and it is a thought-provoking study on the nature of humanity and all of its weaknesses. The story goes like this: Sean, Jimmy, and Dave are friends as kids, until Dave's kidnapping splinters their relationship. After four days in captivity Dave escapes, but the damage is done. The three men grow in opposite directions: Jimmy flirts with violence and power as he raises his precious family, Sean becomes a police detective, and Dave, haunted by his past, struggles for normality. After Jimmy's daughter disappears, the men see each other for the first time in years, and the way their stories connect send their entire community reeling. Violence and profanity in the movie are the major concerns. In the opening scene, a young Dave is kidnapped by two predators masquerading as policemen. We see him drive off with them, and later, through flashbacks, are shown that he was kept locked in a dark basement for days. Other than that, however, nothing else is shown, and his abuse is only discreetly mentioned in dialogue. Elsewhere, a man is seen in a car with a young boy, implying that earlier sexual abuse occured. The pedophile is brutally yanked out of the car, beaten, and presumably killed, and the kid runs away. A man is stabbed twice and then shot off-screen. We see the slightly bloodied body of a young murder victim, and we hear her murder described. The use of the "f" word is prevalent (around 50 times), and other harsh language is frequent as well. The movie isn't especially graphic, but the unsettling, adult thematic material is presented realistically and emotionally, making this a better movie for adults.