Mystic River Details

Since his undoubted masterpiece Unforgiven Clint Eastwood's directorial career has been disappointingly uneven, with the likes of Space Cowboys and Blood Work indicating that he might be a spent force. Mystic River, though, is a welcome return to form — an ambitious, well-crafted adult drama featuring sterling performances from an excellent cast and which only just misses greatness by a whisker. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon play childhood friends whose lives are shattered when Penn's daughter is brutally murdered, an event that forces them to confront a horrific episode from their own shared past. Eastwood directs with crisp efficiency but Brian Helgeland's screenplay somehow fails to convince, emerging as a sequence of well-written individual scenes rather than an integrated whole, while the plot relies too much on coincidence. Judged to the highest standards then, this is a flawed piece of work, but it still ranks as must-see, grown-up cinema.

Brooding, grey-tinged drama that aspires to the stature ot tragedy, but falls short; the narrative is too manipulative and fatalistic, and buckles under the weight put upon it.