Mystic River (Widescreen)

The acting, in particular, was poor. Had Marcia Gay Harden not portrayed an interesting, multidimensional character, there'd have been nothing good to say about any of them.

Sean Penn played the same role he has played since "Falcon and the Snowman" and "Bad Boys" -- the brooding, insolent killer with bad judgment -- yet somehow won an Academy Award for this image. This says more about the Motion Picture Academy and its processes than about this film, which is full of bad acting and direction.

Sadly, Penn's lack of subtlety was only the beginning of the mess. Tim Robbins, who also won an Academy Award as a pitiful victim, was so miscast as a Boston resident it was laughable. The direction given Robbins, Penn, Lawrence Fishburne and Kevin Bacon -- especially in the use of their Boston accents -- was stilted and resulted in unbelievable characterizations.

Boston lifers must have laughed out loud listening to these dimbulbs try to speak Beantownese. No one could be expected to suspend disbelief to that extent!

The fault for this overacting, bad langauge and one-dimensional acting belongs to director Clint Eastwood, a Hollywood insider on scale with "Pretty Woman" Julie Roberts and California Gov. Arnold "Terminator" Schwarzenegger. Had a lesser director or an independent like Spike Lee or John Favreau done this, no Hollywood entity would have rushed forward to reward their effort with awards.

It's great to be Clint Eastwood, I guess. He could at least have used his influence to bring a language coach to the set. One of the elements that makes "The Sopranos" the best program in television history is its language coaching, especially the on-set coach for star James Gandolfini. Even with that, this film would still have been average but would have been more believable had a coach instructed these dummies in the proper use of Boston English. Hell, they even did that with the Louisiana Cajuns in "Southern Comfort"!

Among the movie's other vagueries was the telephone relationship with Bacon's ex-wife. It put a smile on Bacon's face after two hours but played no role in the film. More important, it did nothing to dispel the memory of Bacon competing with Gregory Peck's portrayal of Captain Ahab as the most wooden acting job in Hollywood history. Perhaps Medusa was on the set and turned him to stone for two hours, only to relent once he made up with the wife?

It has been written that the average films that win Academy Awards have the largest advertisinig and promotional budgets and the greatest influence by Hollywood insiders. "Mystic River" is the case study in this postulate, winning several awards and being nominated for many others when it was, in fact, deserving of none.