A quick glance at Clint Eastwood's past directorial efforts suggest that the guy values the basics of good filmmaking (i.e. well-developed characters and a strong story) above all else, eschewing FX-driven epics for smaller, more intimate tales that force actors to paint their roles with every color in their palettes. The sensational MYSTIC RIVER is no exception.

On a purely superficial level, one could describe this adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel as a gripping Boston-area murder mystery, but the film's true brilliance lies in its various characters' quest for vengeance, reconciliation and/or redemption. Bravura performances abound, but Tim Robbins, Marcia Gay Harden and a never-better Sean Penn are standounts (Penn and Robbins won well-deserved Oscars for their efforts here). Watching Penn's Jimmy, an Irish-American shopkeeper whose ties to the local mafia remain strong, grieve over his teenage daughter is a thing of ragged, heart-wrenching beauty. Laura Linney's Lady Macbeth-like final speech still strikes a sour note for me (perhaps the book provides a better set-up for this scene, but on film Linney's underused character doesn't have the presence to pull it off), but it's a very small gripe. Not to discount the CGI wonders on display in loads of other films (God bless George Lucas and Peter Jackson for knowing how to use FX tricks without sacrificing heart), but it's refreshing to witness on-screen fireworks that aren't computer-generated, and MYSTIC RIVER has those to spare.

***WARNING: SPOILER INFORMATION IN REVIEW*** Mystic River - I wanted to watch this movie for quite some time, mostly because it was directed by Clint Eastwood and 3 relatively good actors are in the cast. I am talking about Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon. They are not great actors, but they are there And I shouldn't forget Laurence Fishburne, as Kevin Bacon's partner.

So, when I found time to rent it and watch, I expected to really enjoy it. I didn't read any opinions about the movie before, I didn't want to.

So, I watched the movie and, when it ended, I felt a bitter taste. This is not because of how the actors are playing, but because of what this movie lets you think: that you can kill and get away with it, that you can kill an innocent man and get away with it, EVEN if a police officer knows about your crime. Yes, we know that in real life the good doesn't win all the time, but to leave this impression, that you can kill not only one, but two or even more people and get away with it, it's more than I can accept.

The story unfolds in a grim way, everything is almost grey or dark in the movie, like you expect that something is going to happen.

The story starts with three children, friends living in the same neighbourhood, playing hockey on the street. They are Dave (Tim Robbins), Jimmy (Sean Penn) and Sean (Kevin Bacon). As they see some concrete has just been laid, they decide to write their names in concrete. They don't finish doing this, when a car stops and two strangers, posing as police officers, start bullying the boys and try to convince them to get in their car. Only Dave does this and a horrendous 4 day ordeal starts for him, an ordeal that will follow him his entire life and will alienate the way he sees his life and the others.

Many more years later, we join the three friends, now not close to each other, but still living in the same neighbourhood. Dave has his own family and a boy, Jimmy is an ex-convict who now is a family man and Sean is a police officer who has problems in his marriage, his wife has just left him.

The reason that the three friends are unwillingly brought together is the brutal murder of Jimmy's 19-year-old daughter. Murdered in the same night when Dave comes home late in the night with blood all over his clothes and with a bad wound in the palm of his right hand. He tells his wife that a mugger tried to steal from him and he went mad and almost killed the mugger. But his wife doesn't believe him and not even you, as you watch the movie, don't believe him. And his strange behaviour makes him actually the prime suspect in Jimmy's daughter's murder.

Sean is the police officer assigned to investigate the case and he needs to be a little bit coldhearted in order to do his job. But he can't be like that, as these are his old friends.

We start learning bits and pieces from the three friends' lives since their childhood until present. Their life wasn't easy, especially for Dave, haunted by his childhood ordeal. Unfortunately for him, as I said before, his behaviour makes him the prime suspect and when even his wife tells Jimmy that she thinks he killed Jimmy's daughter, his fate is sealed. Jimmy will kill him, after getting him drunk, on the shores of the Mystic river, only to find out next day that the killer was someone else and Dave sort of told the truth about what happened to him that infamous night. I am not going to tell you the killer was, this is not the point of this opinion.

Sean knows that actually Jimmy has done something horrible to Dave, but he doesn't do anything. Unacceptable for a policeman. And so, Jimmy gets away with this cold-blooded murder of an innocent man. He gets away the same way he got away with the murder of someone who talked to the police about him, years before.

This is what I dislike about the movie, that it leaves this message: you can get away with murder. This is not right. It doesn't matter how good the actors played in the movie (they are doing their part brilliantly, I must admit, Tim Robbins being, for me, the best, with Sean Penn second), how good the movie is directed (Clint Eastwood knows how to do a movie) or how much acclaim this movie got since it was launched. For me, this movie is simply just NOT CORRECT !

Mystic River is about how our lives can take dramatically disparate paths, as well as the banal coexistence of good and evil (although the movie is so understated that the 'good' seems like calm indifference, the 'evil' like a simple mistake). Three friends are accosted by a faux cop as boys, one of them kidnapped and sexually abused for four days. Some forty years later we find their lives have taken radically different directions: Jimmy (Penn) is a slick gangsterish store-owner (kind of like de Niro in Cape Fear) while Sean (Bacon) is a clean-cut efficient cop and Dave (Robbins) a nervous, rambling labourer. The disappearance of Jimmy's daughter brings the three back into close contact, though this time not as friends.

The movie cleverly throws down the gauntlet to those watching, daring them to make an amateurish pre-judgement about one of the characters, teasing out a loungeroom verdict from the viewer based on circumstantial evidence and psychobabble: Dave acts funny, has a busted hand and was molested as a kid, ergo he 'just has to be guilty'. But you jump on and off that bandwagon regularly through the movie, unsure whether it's going to follow a logical path or offer something unexpected in its climax. It's not the first film to play upon this am-I-a-movie-with-a-twist uncertainty but it certainly does it with subtlety and realism.

Mystic River is, when you strip away its trappings, little more than a cop story or a routine whodunnit. However, it involves you in the characters much more than the standard crime fare: the three main stars are, as you'd expect, brilliant while the ensemble - from Dave's nervous wife to the greasily overplayed Savage brothers - round out an effective cast. None of the characters are particularly likeable, though neither are their actions or motives completely inexcusable. Some may like their morality plays a little more moral, but the product is ultimately fulfilling, if a little depressing. It will certainly make you think seriously about that next spell of jury service.