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Thinking that I was going into the sequel to "Mystic Pizza," I was a bit thrown off by the film's opening sequence -- a little boy getting abducted by two big men who proceed to boff him up the ass.

Although there is no actual boffing scene, the hint is taken when the men walk into the kid's dungeon and the kid says, "Please. No more. Please," while holding his hand up in a plea for mercy.

The dungeon boy grows up to be Tim Robbins, while the other two terrible child actors who portray his friends grow up to be Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon. Since the fateful day of Tim's abduction, Penn has become an apparently reformed gang leader, Bacon a cop, and Tim an introverted neighborhood guy.

Being three men who have gone their seperate ways while keeping residence in the old neighborhood, their paths once again collide when Bacon is put on the trail of the killer of Penn's daughter, who may or may not be Robbins.

From there, the film takes on a presence that allows us to forget how lame the opening sequence was, holding its ground with strong performances (supported by Laurence Fishburne as Bacon's partner and Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden as the respectful wives of Penn and Robbins) and solid Clint Eastwood direction.

The story itself has a strong theme that is expressed through the three main characters. In life, there are those who cause pain (Penn), those who heal pain (Bacon), and those who run from pain (Robbins). The statement being made after the curtain closes is that no one can get out of feeling pain, no matter which of the three roads they take. All of this is dealt with sharply, but the film's weakness comes from just how sharp it is sometimes.

After being told a tale that could pass for realistic, the movie ends with twists that are either too predictable (who the killer ends up being when there would be absolutely no point in having that particular character in the movie unless they're the killer) or too out of left field (all of a sudden, someone happens to have been really mean all along). While the conclusion could leave a spooky feeling of unresolved pain that would exit the theater with you, it instead wraps itself up into a pretty little bow that gives each character's future more predictability than vulnerability.

Eastwood fought battles to get this one made, and they were worth it. Sadly though, his directorial touch of subtlety makes every scene that is soaked in drama an obvious fiction. However impressive "Mystic River" may be compared to most of the crap that often clogs the multiplexes, it limits itself to being a Hollywood flick when it could have been something we had never seen before.

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