Most of the nation’s critics have hailed it as one of the best films of 2003. They gush “its powerhouse cast gives incredible performances that should win this year’s Screen Actors Guild awards and next year’s as well for good measure,” and praise “Clint Eastwood’s talented direction (as we kindly turn away from Blood Work and True Crime),” labeling it “a twisty thriller...” Blahdy blahdy blah. While Mystic River is a good film, it does not really deserve the amount of praise and acclaim it has received.

There’s a solid premise at work, to be sure. Three childhood friends, Jimmy (Sean Penn), Dave (Tim Robbins) and Sean (Kevin Bacon), are reunited after the brutal murder of Jimmy’s teenage daughter. However, time has washed away the innocence of these men. Dave was abducted and sexually abused; the emotional scars have never really healed. Jimmy has been to jail, and while he’s managed to get his life back on track and raise a family, he can still call on the Savage Brothers (huh?) to do his dirty work for him. As for Sean, he’s now a cop but burdened with a separation from his wife.

Obviously, the stage is set for what could be an incredibly strong character drama. Sadly, instead, the audience is treated to a two-hour episode of Law & Order. Rather than taking time to delve into the more interesting characters of Jimmy and Dave, the film spends more time on the investigation done by Sean and his partner Whitey Powers (played by Laurence Fishburne, of all people). While the film does try to give time to Jimmy and Dave, these characters have secrets that are so obvious that only the strong performances by Penn and Robbins save them from being laughable.

Honestly, Jimmy tends to be morose, brooding, and intense so you know he’s up to no good and Dave is always acting shifty and spouting nonsense that it seemed like he was going to go up to his wife and say “Honey, from now I’d like you to call me Red. Red Herring.” Instead of fleshing out these potentially interesting characters, the film is content to trod along the tired whodunnit path. And if you can’t figure out the killer halfway through the film, then I suggest you go home and break out the Encyclopedia Brown books. The film simply waxes on the procedural, and while Bacon and Fishburne are good, they’re not the all-stars of this film.

Mystic River’s other positive aspects, however, turn it into a decent drama. Penn and Robbins are fantastic. Tom Stern’s cinematography is naturalistic, yet overcast and foreboding. Eastwood’s music is sorrowful and mysterious.

The relationships between the characters in the film are strong, except between Jimmy and his wife Annabeth (played by Laura Linney, who’s in the film for maybe a sum of eight minutes) where it feels like a giant chunk of the story must be somehow missing.

Mystic River does seem to have proved enjoyable for many people — you should at the very least give it a shot just so you can have an opinion on the Oscars it may win or lose on Feb. 29.