FAQ

When 19-year-old Katie Markum (Emmy Rossum), daughter of Boston shop-owner Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn), is brutally murdered, Jimmy is reunited with two childhood friends—Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), who is the detective investigating the case, and Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins), who was abducted off the street and sexually abused for four days when the boys were 11 years old. As the case unfolds, it looks more and more like Dave is the murderer.

Mystic River (2001) was written by American author Dennis Lehane and adapted for the screen by American screenwriter Brian Helgeland.

The Mystic River is the name of a river in Boston. Its name comes from a Wampanoag word meaning "big river." Jimmy tells Dave, "We bury our sins here (i.e. in the Mystic River), Dave. We wash them clean," so some viewers see something more "mystical" in the title and have likened it metaphorically to karma, that is, what-goes-around-comes-around. The author hasn't admitted much more than that he liked the name of the river and the various meanings it could have.

One movie that viewers have mentioned as being similar to Mystic River is Summer of Sam (1999), in which a punk rocker is almost beaten to death when his "friends" conclude that he must be the serial killer known as "Son of Sam", who is terrorizing their section of the Bronx. Thematically very similar is Gone Baby Gone (2007), another crime story set in Boston, also by writer Dennis Lehane.