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The dramatic crux is from Ray's On Dangerous Ground, and there are consequences for Eastwood's Mystic River. England is a muddy field dotted at dusk with flashlights, illumination means fluorescent lamps in a police station made of cinder blocks. The crime at hand is a young girl's rape, the tipping point for the detective sergeant (Sean Connery) following two decades of ugliness in the force. "Bloody good sort of lead," a dazed would-be molester (Ian Bannen) in the interrogation room, the aftermath is glimpsed in the beginning in a slow-motion flashforward. The smeared windshield the detective stares through is a screen on which he projects foul images, at home the miserable missus (Vivien Merchant) cannot soothe the fragmented psyche. "It's possible, see, just possible that I've killed a man tonight." Sidney Lumet's bleakest law and order crack-up, founded on concentrated wintry grime and Connery's fantastic shadings of bullying, dissatisfaction, self-disgust. "The things I've seen," cf. Wyler's Detective Story, "the thoughts, the pictures, the noise, the endless screaming panic." The trick is to separate man and cop, says the superintendent (Trevor Howard) to the bloke who slams his head on the desk in hopes of purging the filth within. A blazing overhead light leaves its imprint on the camera, the recurring effect is a ringing iris like a marked lens. Judge and jury and executioner in a locked chamber with the cowering-razzing suspect—not "something like the truth" but rather "something they all understand, sweetie, pain," Lumet brings it to bear on Connery's wrathful grimace and Bannen's mauled leer. The accidental parodies are by Dumont (L'humanité) and Penn (The Pledge). With Peter Bowles, Derek Newark, Ronald Radd, John Hallam, Richard Moore, and Anthony Sagar.
--- Fernando F. Croce |