Those actors, left wing as they are, delivered excellent performances in Mystic River. That's all a director wants from an actor. If I were a director, I wouldn't care less about an actors' politics as long as they did their job acting and didn't speak to me with their rhetoric.
You can't blame a director for the actors he works with.
Clints the one who picked them, soyeah I can.
I saw "Mystic River" on my WebTV/DirecTV - PIP - while surfing FR the other day
Good actors, performances - a powerful movie - a few actors seem to have that nutcase off-screen Limo-Socialist-Lobbyist millionaire agenda which Eastwood does not seem to have
I have not seen this latest flick so I can not intelligently comment about it (many lib journalists never seem to need to even read the book, see the movie)
It is truly a shame that Sean Penn and Tim Robbins adopt an stupid "expert on national security" role instead of applying that emotion and passion to future acting roles.
Penn and Robbins were good in their roles but I kept thinking of their pro-Saddam Hussein statements, and in Sean Penn's case, his personal visit to Bagdad (like Cong. Jim McTraitor) to kiss up to a mass murdering tyrant/butcher reading Adoph Hitler's script.
Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne also were great and appear to believe their career depends on good outstanding entertainment, not crazy rants without honest substance.
Clint Eastwood directed "Mystic River" brilliantly - a "little government" guy somehow getting several hypocritical liberal democrats to "shut up and act".
Whoever cast this ensemble did a great job.
On a side note, back a bit I heard Clint Eastwood call in (from his vehicle in California) to Mike Savage to straighten out some things about "Mystic River" and Savage treated Clint like he was/is an idiot.
Mike Weiner-Savage is low-rent jerk.