The three protagonists represent three status symbols.
Jimmy represents the old order. In his wife's words, he is the king who rules the town. The old order has its own set of governance logic. There is no privacy and secrets here. Everyone is intimate, married to each other, respects the will of the parents, hates informers, and executes private law.
Sean represents the New Order. He became a policeman with his own efforts, and finally escaped from this childhood homeland, which he regarded as feudal and conservative, with remnants of repressed past. The new order symbolizes civilization and justice, but the heart is cold, as exemplified by Sean's broken marriage.
Dave is the most unfortunate, he has been branded since he was 10 years old. It doesn't matter what kind of brand he has, what matters is that he is different from everyone else from now on. He was rejected as an alien, living in the old order, and he wanted to escape but was powerless.
As the old and new order meet, conflict and confrontation are inevitable. The police handled the case in accordance with the procedures and surrounded Jimmy outside the fence; Jimmy also distrusted the police who suddenly broke into his town, and vowed to personally kill the murderer who killed his daughter before the police solved the case. It turned out that Jimmy executed Dave, but Dave was not the real murderer.
Whether Dave is the real killer or not is no longer important to the Jimmys. The Jimmys shouted, urging the king to kill the alien and completely remove the wisdom tooth that had persisted in the town for decades. Under the intoxication and bewitching words of alcohol, not only Jimmy believed the story, but Dave himself believed it. In the end, Jimmy kept his oath as king and threw Dave into the Mystic River. May this new home bring spiritual relief to Dave.
After all this, Sean reconciled with the old order to a certain extent, and also recalled his lover who had been away for half a year. He realized that he had to come back after all, or in his own words: all three of them got into that car.
Clint Eastwood uses a murder to tell us a story of a confrontation between old and new order. The fate of the three of them was written in childhood, so why not we?
View more about Mystic River reviews
