The screenplay was written by Brian Helgeland, who also wrote L.A. Confidential, The film was nominated for six Oscars, winning two.
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It won a prize at Cannes, a César, a couple of Golden Globes, and a bunch of other award.Īnd it deserved them. It's well-acted, well-shot, meditative without seeming slow. Jimmy some years ago murdered Ray, Brendan's father.The same night, Dave came home badly injured and in shock he claimed that he was mugged and managed to wound or kill his attacker only Celeste knows this.Katie was shot several times and left to die in a ditch.It's a murder mystery and by three-quarters of the way through the film, the following facts have been established:ĭave, a childhood friend of Jimmy and Sean.Sean, a police detective and a childhood friend of Jimmy.In fact, there is only one problem with the movie: it makes no fucking sense at all. The gun used to kill Katie was also used in a robbery perpetrated by Jimmy and Ray many years ago.Esther (Brendan's mother and Ray's widow) and the police know this but Brendan does not. Now the obvious suspect is Esther: assuming it was Ray's gun, she had access to the murder weapon, and she certainly had a motive, revenge for the murder of her husband. She is shown as a viciously unpleasant person and she might think that killing Jimmy's beloved daughter is more severe and more fitting retribution than killing Jimmy himself.Īnother suspect is Jimmy, the victim's father. It might have been his gun, or he might have taken the gun from Ray when he killed him. He's not given a motive, but he is a criminal and a killer. He is interfering in the investigation he claims to be looking for the real killer, but that's what OJ said too. Sean, a supposedly competent investigator, never even considers either of those two possibilities, and focuses first on Dave, solely because Dave is acting squirrelly (although Dave has been acting squirrelly all his life) and then on Brendan, because of the weapon and because he's the boyfriend. The problem with all these theory is that either Dave did kill Katie - despite having no motive and no access to the murder weapon - or he didn't. Remember Dave confessed to his wife that he killed somebody. Is it just a huge coincidence, that two childhood friends are both involved in unrelated homicides, within an hour of each other, only a few blocks apart? His story keeps shifting he cannot sleep he tells his wife he thinks he is turning into a monster. Who? Ray Jr., Brendon's 14-year-old little brother, killed Katie. Why wasn't he on the list of suspects? Because he was only in two scenes in the movie, he never does or says anything the least suspicious and, indeed, has no motive. Somehow, he knew where their father's pistol was hidden (who would tell a little kid that), decided to kill a person at random, and at 1 in the morning, by chance, ran into his brother's fiancée.īrendon figures it out first, the moment the police tell him that his father's gun was the murder weapon, and he goes to beat a confession out of Ray Jr. How did Brendon figure it out? We never find out. How did he know it was his sweet, motiveless brother and not his nasty, well-motivated mother? We aren't told.
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Katie's abandoned car was called in Ray Jr.'s accomplice in the crime - Why? To advance the plot the murderers had no reason to tell the police anything, and the bloodstained car would found soon enough anyway - and through an implausible slip, the accomplice gives away that he knows the driver was female. AOSCSR ACCEPTANCE SPEECH MARCIA GAY HARDEN MYSTIC RIVER DRIVER Somehow, that leads the police to Ray Jr. The kicker is, Celeste, Dave's wife, went and told Jimmy that Dave has been acting suspiciously. Because that's what you did when the local violent criminal's daughter has been murdered and you have a vague suspicion that a much-loved family member might have done it, you go tell the criminal, he'll know what to do. Jimmy does know what to do: he gathers a bunch of his fellow criminals and kidnaps Dave and interrogates him. AOSCSR ACCEPTANCE SPEECH MARCIA GAY HARDEN MYSTIC RIVER DRIVERĭave tells him the truth, which is that he didn't kill Katie and he didn't kill a mugger.