In Clint Eastwood's brilliantly inspired crime drama Mystic River, "Sean Penn gives his best performance since Carlito's Way". If you needed any more assurance of this, aside from watching the film, look to the Academy Awards 2004. With Best Actor kudos for Penn, and co-star Tim Robbins nabbing Best Supporting Actor, only Mystic River managed to raise its head above The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King's deluge of gongs. A great pity, then, that this truly heavyweight picture should make such a lightweight package on DVD. Fans with multi-player DVD players should get hold of the far superior two-disc Region 1 edition.

Clint's Mystique

Aside from the obligatory theatrical trailer (gee, thanks), all that the good folks at Warner Bros bestow upon us is an 11 (and a half!) minute documentary, From Page To Screen. Old Saddlebags and his cast of players talk us through the themes underlying the story, spliced in with key scenes from the film. Frustratingly though, we're not afforded any behind-the-scenes peeks, except for a couple of still photos of Clint donning baseball cap in mid-gesticulation. The denial of access is made even more frustrating by the actors' universal praise of him: Kevin Bacon enthuses that working with Clint is the best experience he's ever had as an actor, while Laurence Fishburne reckons "On Clint's set, it's as cool as a summer breeze, all the time." We can only take their word for it.

A few useful insights come from the director himself as he talks about his general approach to filmmaking: he paraphrases John Huston when he says "You have to treat each scene like it's the most important in the picture". No doubt he has great passion for the source material, the best-selling novel by Dennis Lehane - who also pops up here to express great pleasure and surprise at the faithful interpretation of what he calls his "street opera". Screenwriter Brian Helgeland beefs things up a little more by drawing parallels between this and his Oscar-winning script for L.A. Confidential.

And, um, that's it. We're denied any sort of audio commentary, thus totally enveloping Clint Eastwood, Director, in a hermetically sealed air of mystique. In fairness though, Mystic River is still a must-have, simply because it stands as one of the best films of 2004 - The Return Of The King notwithstanding.