Mystic River is a lengthy drama with no happy endings, no easy solutions, no neat and tidy bow available to tie things together. Thank the goddess.

Intelligent adult fare is hard to find on the big screen, but Clint Eastwood manages nicely with this tough ensemble piece. He works with a superb cast and a great script.

There's plenty going on in the movie, but it's nonetheless character-driven.

Mystic River is based on the novel by Dennis Lehane and set in a blue-collar section of Boston.

The story is complex in a psychological way, but it goes more or less like this: Things change for a trio of childhood friends after a life-altering incident. As adults (played by Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon) each of them proves to have been marked forever by that event from the past.

When a young woman dies in their old neighbourhood, each of these men is involved -- the soft-spoken Dave (Robbins), who has never dealt with the harm done to him in childhood; the streetwise Jimmy (Penn), a family man who is motivated by dark emotions, and the isolated Sean (Bacon), who is cut off from everyone except his police partner.

(The cast also includes Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden and Laurence Fishburne. Even Eli Wallach has a cameo as a liquor store owner. Is this gilding the lily or not?)

Mystic River is a film about ordinary people and their ordinary lives, and about stolen innocence, murder and revenge.

Everything about the film is sorrowful. The characters and their landscape are oddly colourless, the music haunting, the visuals stark. Dread is the lead emotion. It's the sort of film that stays with you long after you've left the theatre.

For all the good stuff going on in Mystic River -- and there is plenty -- it has to be said that the film's strong cast also proves to be its weakest point. The last act of Mystic River tips into melodrama land; you can see that there's a whole lot of acting going on, and it takes you out of the movie.

Less familiar faces on the big screen might have prevented that sort of disconnect, but never mind. Much is forgiven simply because Mystic River is otherwise so well done.

(This film is rated 14A)

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