Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon

Shakespeare's got nothin' on South Boston when it comes to tragedy, at least according to Mystic River, a film about vengeance, suspicion, grief and the unhealed wounds of childhood.

In a prologue set twenty-five years ago, we meet three boys, Dave, Jimmy and Sean. They're interrupted in the act of writing their names in fresh cement by two men claiming to be cops, who take Dave away in a car. Well, they're not cops and Dave is held captive and raped for four days before he escapes.

Cut to the present. The friends have grown apart. Jimmy (Sean Penn) is an ex-con running a corner grocery store, Sean (Kevin Bacon) a cop, Dave (Tim Robbins) a mild-mannered husband and father with the air of a victim. When Jimmy's eldest daughter is brutally murdered, Sean is the cop assigned to the case. The trail quickly leads to Dave, who came home covered in blood the night of the murder and whose wife Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden) is growing increasingly skittish around him.

Sean Penn and Tim Robbins

While Sean, perhaps haunted by guilt that it was Dave and not him who got into the backseat of that car, is reluctant to suspect his old friend, Jimmy, galvanized by grief, doesn't have that luxury. He went straight long ago, but when he has need of it he slips back into thug mode as easily as putting on his black leather jacket, and once he suspects Dave it's inevitable that he'll do something about it.

Director Clint Eastwood has crafted a solemn, raw meditation on these characters and themes. His depiction of Jimmy's fierce, raging grief and Dave's bleeding emotional wounds is almost too painful to watch at times. Sean's storyline - his wife has left him but still calls regularly, though she never says anything - pales in comparison. It's given just enough attention to let us wonder about it, assume it's another victim of the wounds caused by that fateful day when they watched Dave being driven away, then promptly forget about it again. His investigation, too, is given too much weight, distracting from the more affecting personal stories.

Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden

That's not entirely Eastwood's fault. The script by Brian Helgeland (based on the novel by Dennis Lehane) is uneven. There's devastating emotional impact and finely drawn characters, but also some slack pacing, plodding police-procedural type exposition and characters whose depths are only hinted at when they should be explored further. Laura Linney, for example, as Jimmy's wife Annabeth, is largely ignored until a shocking speech during one of the movies several endings reveals what she's made of.

You can't fault the acting. Linney nails her big scene and Penn's performance is as complex as you'd expect from him. Robbins isn't afraid to play creepy and awkward, so much so that he got kind of irritating, but props to him for going there.

Overall, though, I'm not as warmly disposed towards Mystic River as I'd like to be. While its story is undeniably tragic and affecting, the execution is uneven. A good deal of it is excellent, but there are plenty of times when it veers from hard-boiled noir to overwrought melodrama. The filmmakers can do better, and the cast surely deserves it.

Gorilla Pants rating: 2.5 out of 4 bananas