Terrible things happen in Clint Eastwood’s 2003 film Mystic River, and they mostly happen because an awful past continues to exert its pull on a damaged present. It begins with three boys playing on a Boston street. One of them, Dave, is abducted and sexually assaulted. The other two, Sean and Jimmy, stand helplessly as he is taken. Decades later, Dave (Tim Robbins) continues to suffer the trauma of his ordeal. Jimmy (Sean Penn) is the ex-con owner of a local convenience store. Sean (Kevin Bacon) works homicide for the Boston police. When Jimmy’s daughter is murdered, all three men are forced back into one another’s lives.

Clint Eastwood is a lot of things. For one he remains a near-unparalleled icon of American cinema through his westerns. For another he has become something of a figure of fun for his inarticulate and performative conservative politics. For me, however, he is most of all one of America’s most dependable and talented filmmakers. In fact, by this late stage of his career I consider him a director first and an actor second. He has a masterful handle on narrative, particularly via a clarity of storytelling that is second-to-none. His aesthetic is not a flashy one. Everything in his films are focused on a single goal, and that is to tell stories.

In this case the story is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, the same crime writer whose Shutter Island was well adapted by Martin Scorsese. The adaptation is by the talented Brian Helgeland, who previously did a similarly outstanding job on Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential. The film takes its time to set up its characters and their conflicts with one another. At first one might assume the film has been set up to be a tense crime thriller. Instead it is a tragedy: the end result is inevitable from the opening scenes. The characters never express any possibility of doing something else.

Eastwood works here with a sensational cast, as he typically does. Sean Penn and Tim Robbins were both awarded well-deserved Oscars for their work; Penn in particular offers a distinctive, multi-layered performance that owes more than a little to Robert De Niro. A supporting cast includes Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne – both rock solid – as well as Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney. It is a very male film in tone and content, both Harden and Linney make hugely valuable contributions. Even today both actors remain hugely underrated.

Sadly there are still imperfections. Eastwood’s attempt to compose his own musical score is not entirely successful, and actually works against a number of scenes that would have performed better without any music at all. There is also the casting of Spencer Treat Clark (Unbreakable) as the non-verbal “Silent Ray” Harris. Once again an opportunity for an actor with disability to get a role is denied in favour of convenience. It is a jarring oversight.

Ultimately, however, this remains a heart-breaking drama that absolutely wounds the viewer by its conclusion. It is memorable and masterful. It is a highlight in a long, respected career of motion pictures.

There are many good films released around the world every year. Masterpiece celebrates the best of the very best: genuinely superb works of cinema that come with FictionMachine‘s very highest recommendation. If we had our own Criterion Collection, these are the films we would want it to include.