Eastwood and his actors create a brooding drama whose events and interrelationships seem surreally improbable yet painfully authentic.

| Nov 12, 2018

It is a film of magisterial, slow-burning power, one of the finest examples of recent American cinematic storytelling and certainly Eastwood's most mature film.

| Jan 11, 2018

Powerful performances in graphic story. Only 16+.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 26, 2010

Violence and revenge have been a staple of Eastwood's work from the beginning, but here he explores his subject from a new, more ambiguous angle, with no regard for macho titillation.

| Jul 7, 2010

While not quite the equal of the novel, it's more complex, emotionally-charged and better acted than the average Hollywood thriller.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 30, 2006

It is in many ways Eastwood's tightest movie for some time, and certainly his darkest since Unforgiven; indeed, the ending offers as corrosive an assessment of the limits of American justice as anything in his career.

| Jun 24, 2006

Sean Penn is so frighteningly good in this movie that he outdoes even the best of his earlier work.

Full Review | Aug 7, 2004

The unfashionably slow editing style and the concentration on close-ups and two-shots allow Eastwood to scrutinise his characters as they are forced to dig into themselves.

| Jan 15, 2004

Works as a straight-up detective story, and the acting is often breathtaking.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 14, 2003

Too depressing to fill audiences with delight, but it does seem to validate questionable attitudes, especially an indifference to the suffering of innocent people and a willingness to shoot first and ask questions later.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 24, 2003

It's Penn's heavy-lidded, dead-behind-the-eyes turn that overshadows all, carrying the weight, pain and misery of the world -- and the picture.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 22, 2003

Deeply serious, sombre, long and humourless, it reeks of integrity. Eastwood's best since Unforgiven? Maybe, but it's the one I'd least like to sit through again.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2003

Contains so many layers that you'll want to see it more than once. It's one for the memory books.

| Original Score: A | Oct 17, 2003

There is depth in this movie, and fine acting. But even more intriguing, there are questions... questions with no clear answers.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Oct 17, 2003

Smart, hard-charging, compassionate.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 17, 2003

The experience of being so absorbed in a movie and the lives of the people in it, of trusting a director and a writer and actors to take me places completely unexpected, is so rare that I savored every unexpected turn and twist.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 17, 2003

Clint Eastwood's latest directorial effort is perhaps the best film he's ever made.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 17, 2003

A solid whodunit, with disturbing, provocative, take-home insights into human nature.

| Oct 16, 2003

A masterpiece of the first order.

| Oct 16, 2003

It is an impressive movie masquerading as an important one.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Oct 16, 2003