SUBMITTED BY Timbo

October 2, 2003 — The New York Times pens a positive review for Clint Eastwood's latest, "Mystic River", praising its "extraordinary intensity of feeling".

As with most murder mysteries, the densely woven narrative of "Mystic River" is a skein of coincidences and somewhat implausible connections. What gives the movie its extraordinary intensity of feeling is the way Mr. Eastwood grounds the conventions of pulp opera in an unvarnished, thickly inhabited reality. There are scenes that swell with almost unbearable feeling, and the director's ambitions are enormous, but the movie almost entirely avoids melodrama or grandiosity.

Mr. Eastwood has found actors who can bear the weight and illuminate the abyss their characters inhabit. Mr. Penn, his eyes darting as if in anticipation of another blow, his shoulders tensed to return it, is almost beyond praise. Jimmy Markum is not only one of the best performances of the year, but also one of the definitive pieces of screen acting in the last half-century, the culmination of a realist tradition that began in the old Actor's Studio and begat Brando, Dean, Pacino and De Niro.

Read the full review below.