Best movie of 2003

Rating: 10/10 (7 December 2005)

Eastwood, like Dirty Harry, is at it again. He keeps blowing moviegoers out of the water with his great films. Mystic River is no exception. Eastwood assembles a cast here that is second-to-none. Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney, Lawrence Fishburne. It reads like an A-List celebrity event. Three childhood friends come back into contact years later after a horrific event. One of the friend's children has been murdered and the hunt is on for the killer(s). Where the trail leads is startling and exhilarating. The plot starts off fairly simple and yet gets quickly complicated as all the characters come into play. And these characters are anything but simple. Even the bad guys (and there are many) are three dimensional Sean Penn's character being the most glaring example. Of course what people will talk about for years is the ending. What a bombshell. It's the kind of nightmare that happens in real life all too often when people predictably enough, jump to conclusions. This one is a grand slam home run.