Mystic River (2003)

This film was great. Dark, but brilliant.
Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn) is a murderer and he murders the wrong man, Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins).
Dave has scars from his kidnapping as a child where he was abused and held captive for four days. And when he shows up at his house at three in the morning with blood on him, he doesn't tell his wife, Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden) the truth. In reality, he killed a child molester, but he tells his wife that he was mugged.
However, unfortunately, that same night, Jimmy's eldest daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum) is accidentally murdered by the younger brothers of the guy she's seeing and the son of a guy who turned on her father and then he killed him. But Katie's murder isn't out of cold blood. The young boys just found the gun and wanted to scare her, yet, she ends up dead.
Jimmy is furious and sends out his goons to find out the truth and Celeste brings her suspicions to Jimmy instead the cops, Jimmy confronts Dave and he, reluctantly, admits that he killed Katie because he feels that it will save his own life but it doesn't. Jimmy stabs him to death anyway and then tosses his body out to the river, just like he did to his former partner who turned on him all those years ago.
The problem lies within the investigation itself. Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) is the third member of the trio of Jimmy, Dave and Sean and the most straight-laced of the three with a fancy job as State Police Detective but his home life is troubled. His wife, for reasons unknown, took off and calls him, saying nothing every so often and hasn't even had the courtesy to tell him what she named their daughter. Though they reconcile at the end, the reason is never explained as to why she left in the first place. That is mostly a personal nit pick of mine. Sean and his partner, Whitey (Laurence Fishburne) are on the case, shocked that the Markums knew nothing of Katie's plan to run away to Las Vegas with her boyfriend. Dave is the suspect that Whitey is focused on but it isn't until they finally listen to the 911 tape that the truth is revealed, just a little too late to save Dave's life. And though Jimmy basically tells Sean that Dave is dead because of him, no body is found though the murdered molester has been found and he wants to question Dave about that murder. So Jimmy gets away with murder and his Lady Macbethish wife, Annabeth (Laura Linney), seems fine. In fact, she's offended that Celeste would ever think that Dave was a murderer.
Though the plot is universally depressing and the happy ending is certainly not one in my book, the acting is fabulous. Penn and Robbins both deserved the Oscars they won and Harden more than deserved her nomination. Each has expressive faces and their eyes bore into the souls of their characters. The pained expressions on their faces tell the story and what each character is thinking. The film also has a gritty realism that I like, without the shiny polish Hollywood filled its films with.
However, if you want to watch a happy film, this is not the film for you though the acting is forever noteworthy. Grade: A