FROM his very first reading, director/producer Clint Eastwood knew he wanted to bring Dennis Lehane’s best-selling novel Mystic River to the screen.

“I read the book and optioned it immediately,” he recalls. “It’s a riveting story with enormous potential as a film. The characters are complex, interesting and well defined”.

Eastwood, who won Academy Awards for best director and best picture for his landmark Western Unforgiven in 1993, brings a classically spare, candid approach to Mystic River. “This film is about real people trying to come to terms with who they are under very tough circumstances. It needs to be done honestly and it needs to ring true”.

Mystic River explores the interwoven history of three men, the terrible events that tainted their boyhood and shaped their futures, and the irrevocable choices they are ultimately forced to make. Individually, these characters must come to terms with their own personal demons, struggling with issues that bring an alarming momentum into the mix.

“Murder mysteries are usually only about solving the crime,” says Eastwood, “but in this case the story shows how, beyond the murder, all of the participants’ lives have been altered by the crime. One gets to see the impact a violent act has had, many years after the fact. It’s that tragic circle – all three of these men have unresolved issues in their lives. They have all been traumatised by the past. All became damaged goods”.

Childhood friends Jimmy, Dave and Sean grew up together, living and playing on the same neighbourhood streets of South Boston. But when a shocking tragedy befell one of them, the boys stopped spending time together and eventually grew apart, each keeping his distance as if the others were living reminders of that devastating time. But while their lives may have led them in different directions, they were all turning away from the same painful place.

Tim Robbins plays the deeply troubled Dave. “Dave is one of these guys who finds a way to survive and exist despite a past filled with horrific events,” the actor muses. “Maybe what he should have done is left that neighbourhood and started fresh somewhere, but he didn’t. He’s internalised his painful experience and not talked about it or dealt with it, so it has festered and festered for years”.

Haunted by the devastating events of his childhood, Dave stayed in the poorer section of town, working menial jobs and eventually starting a family with his wife Celeste, played by Marcia Gay Harden. When Jimmy’s 19-year-old daughter Katie is inexplicably murdered, the details of the crime slowly emerge and Celeste begins to break down under the weight of her uncertainty and dread.

Harden felt a kinship with her character. “The story has an immediate, personal connection for me,” says the actress, “because Celeste has a young son, and I’m a mother with a four-year-old daughter. It also greatly appealed to me because it questions that moment in life when innocence is lost”.

“Mystic River deals with a kind of unimaginable pain,” says Sean Penn, who plays Jimmy. “I found myself drawing from the writing and the other actors. We spent a lot of time together, reading through the script and trying to find a kind of peace with the things that occur and the choices that are made. Our job was to make these impossibly painful situations dramatically understandable”.

Jimmy’s anchor throughout the tragedy is his love for his daughters and the strength of his fiercely devoted wife, whose loyalty to those closest to her knows no bounds.

“Annabeth is tough; very, very tough,” says Laura Linney of her character. “She’s like a mother lion, very protective, with a huge sense of pride and entitlement. She’s always on guard – she’s got an ‘I dare you’ quality about her”.

As Jimmy was serving time, his boyhood buddy Sean aligned with the other side of the law, becoming a Massachusetts State homicide detective. Increasingly alienated from humanity by the never-ending indiscriminate cruelty he sees in the course of his investigations, and separated from his wife except for her painful, silent phone calls, Sean has come to question the meaning of his efforts.

“As adults, all of these men have disconnected from one another,” relates Kevin Bacon, who plays the conflicted cop. “Sean moved away and now he spends all of his time trying to solve homicides. His wife has left him, he’s living alone and he has no friends – he’s just walking through life like a zombie”.

Sean’s only remaining personal connection is with his partner Whitey. Laurence Fishburne plays the homicide detective, who serves as his partner’s objective reality check. “Whitey is truly the outsider among all of these people,” says Fishburne. “He doesn’t have any familial or friendship connections”.

“A big part of the job for Laurence and myself was to have a real kind of chemistry and complexity to our relationship,” says Bacon, “as two dedicated cops trying to solve this murder which, for Sean, brings him back into his old neighbourhood and childhood friendships”.

Fishburne stresses the partnership that is the underlying force in their success. “The way I would describe the characters is this: Sean Penn is married to Laura Linney, Tim Robbins is married to Marcia Gay Harden and I’m married to Kevin Bacon. The partnerships that cops have are really like marriages”.