Three 11 year old friends are playing in their neighbourhood. They decide to write their names on the fresh cement in the pavement. Jimmy, Sean and Dave. As Dave is scrawling on the ground, a man confronts the boys, claiming to be a police officer.
The children are scared ? the man asks Dave to come with him as he wants to take him to his mother and tell her what her son has been up to. As Dave gets into the car, the two other boys look on wordlessly. Dave looks helplessly at his friends from the back of the car as it drives away.
Years later, the friends have grown up and lead very separate lives.
Jimmy, a retired criminal who now runs a grocery store, is thrown into a ?world of hurt? when his favourite, nineteen year old daughter is found murdered. Sean is the investigating cop.
During his first conversation with Sean after the murder, Jimmy recalls how he met and married Emmy?s mother ? his first wife. She was a striking regal person and he would have never had the courage to even think of approaching her if he did not possess the kind of supreme confidence he did have in himself. And that confidence had something to do with the circumstances of his life.
Comparing himself to Dave, he says the if he had the same experience as Dave, he would have been a basket-case, without any self-confidence whatsoever.
Initially, Jimmy suspects his daughter?s boyfriend, Brendan, of murdering his daughter. (Emmy?s boyfriend and his relationships with Emmy, his mother and his brother form an intriguing subplot in the movie.) As events unfold however, the suspicion falls on Dave. Jimmy who is shown to be otherwise very fond of Dave confronts him with his doubts.
Sean Penn who won an Oscar for this role plays Jimmy, the emotional ex-gangster who loves his daughter so much that he sheds the life of a criminal and adopts a more ?regular? mode of livelihood.
However, even as a grocery store owner, he has a ?godfather-like? air about him that is reinforced by the fact that his second-wife?s relatives, who he turns to, in order to help him avenge his daughter?s death are in fact, the local mafia.
His role is also the most nuanced ? allowing us to view him as a father, a friend, a gangster and a husband.
Kevin Bacon has the more conventional role of the cop. Estranged from his wife, he is shown as a sensible, emotionally stable person ? perhaps even a morally upright one.
Tim Robbins gives a thought-provoking, mesmerising performance as Dave. Haunted by nameless demons, his gratefully normal life seems to depend on something too fragile ? his state of mind. Gentle, in an expressionless way, he seems to be going through the motions of life. You can?t bear to look at him and you can?t look away.
Paedophilia ? one of those things that make you doubt the existence of God, Civilisation and Humanity. It is also one of those things that, with the right amount of intellectual sophistry, can be seen as intriguing/interesting/amusing (a la Nabokov).
This movie does not make a clinical analysis. It makes no attempt to soften the edges. The scene of the car pulling away while Dave looks at his friends, and Dave?s unfinished scrawl on the pavement are images that intend to make you pause. Yes ? life, can get so irreversibly hopeless.
If it sounds like intellectual fare that will not sustain your interest, you are mistaken. It is a smoothly-flowing narrative that never lets your attention waver.
Clint Eastwood?s directorial prowess is simply undeniable. For me, the most telling aspect of his skill is revealed in the last few minutes of the movie. Here, we are surprised by the ultimate revelations that the characters make.
Jimmy?s wife?s expression as she looks at Dave?s wife give one an unexpected and bitter-clear perspective of life. Subtly, we are made to perceive that often love and friendship are mere lies; trifles, that hide the ultimate reality ? power.