Mystic River and 21 Grams are both heavy-handed, stark movies, but while Mystic River is enjoyable despite its subject, 21 Grams provides nothing for the viewer except unanswered, barely provocative questions.
Mystic River is Shakespearean in scope (complete with its useless Act Five), something close to Titus in bloody sadness. The story cuts and weaves like Shakespeare's cut and wove, centering on multiple characters as they unravel the mystery of one girl's killing. Unbeautified murder stories like this have been mamed, however; shows like Faces of Death and American Idol saw to their execution. No longer will an audience accept a film like Halloween with its straight-line formula: psycho killer comes to town, kills girls in short shorts. That dog won't hunt, 'cause when we want to see gory death we want the real thing, police chase and all. When we want to see short shorts (ie. kids just like us), we watch idiots auditioning for TV.
Instead, we put Michael Meyers in a suit and make him a mature, sophisticated cannibal. Presto! We have a killer for our generation. I mean, David Mamet wrote the screenplay for Hannibal. David (as he would probably write it)-fucking-Mamet, the guy who brought us Main Street ("Go you huskies") and Sexual Perversity in Chicago ("And I said to him, 'Danny, don't go looking for love from inanimate objects'!"). Hannibal is a smarter, better looking horror flick we've named the "psychological thriller." The devices have changed, the gist is the same: kill. A lot.
So when a movie like Mystic River is going to depart from one measly bashed head, there had better be something else to dazzle us. Hamlet's trick is to present the audience with some unmatched philosophical musings (not to mention ghosts and a swordfight). Mystic River gives us a cast to, ahem, die for (not to mention Clint Eastwood as a director. Seriously, don't mention it; I was much more impressed by the directorial efforts of Mystic River's stars. Sean Penn's The Indian Runner is simply profound, and what else needs to be said about Dead Man Walking?). Tim Robbins especially gives a great performance in Mystic River, convincing us of his character's depth with a slouch, a step.
With very little to amuse an audience, I watched the movie and wondered why I was enjoying myself so much. It's not a "human condition" film, it doesn't dazzle, and the dialogue is rarely more than functional (for a movie that excels on the merits of dialogue alone, see Narc. Ray Liotta is the king.) In fact, the movie is paced a little bit too slow. Why did I like it, then? Because Mystic River is a good story presented clearly by an accomplished cast of likable characters. It's practically PT Anderson, without the college degree; at times I nearly expected Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Lawrence Fishburne to sing a maudlin song. Mystic River wants to be fun.
21 Grams on the other hand, is an opaque story told in incoherent slabs that, when fit together, make you wonder why you bothered. If Quentin Tarantino directed Dancer in the Dark, this is what you'd have. Benecio Del Toro and Naomi Watts give great performances, sure, and the characters and contexts are compelling, but the effort the movie requires is not worth the reward.
The reward, however, is at least a 21 gram nugget. I wish the director (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) hadn't got so mired in film school--if that's the reason he piles on the crappy meta-tricks that weigh down this movie. He does show a good hand in Benecio Del Toro's character, an ex-hoodlum who wants to be in "the perfect center of God's will," as my mom would call it. After his accident claims 3/4ths of a young family, he absurdly accepts responsibility. He wonders what Jesus is trying to teach him, and when his priest (the movie's best character) says, "You bastard don't you blaspheme!" Del Toro reiterates that, knowing every hair on his head, God must have known that he was going to kill those people. Inarritu is working toward some interesting thoughts about love and responsibility, but he never resolves them. Instead, he ties the movie up with a plot of run-of-the-mill vengeance gone bad.
If Inarritu had chosen a less clunky narrative (and maybe a different director of photography), he'd have a good final product. What he gives us instead is a simple story wound around itself that unravels into nothing. If I'm going to leave with nothing, I'd rather watch girls in short shorts run around for 89 minutes.