In theaters

MYSTIC RIVER, Directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, 137 minutes, rated R.

The new Clint Eastwood movie, “Mystic River,” tells the story of three boyhood friends divided by an act of sexual abuse in the early 1970s and then joined again in the present by murder. The film is slow-going but precise, a bleak, working-class tragedy set in Boston that’s darkened by Shakespearean undertones.

Essentially a police procedural, the guts of which ultimately hinge on contrivance and coincidence, the movie is from a script by Brian Helgeland based on Dennis Lehane’s best-selling 2001 crime novel, and hails from a major studio (Warner Bros.). Nevertheless, it embraces an independent filmmaking spirit, one that demands less flash and better acting than your typical whodunit.

The film opens in the 1970s with the surreal abduction of one of the boys by two pedophiles before fading to black and picking up their stories 25 years later on the eve of a murder.

There’s Dave (Tim Robbins), whose molestation as a child has turned him into a near zombie as an adult; Jimmy (Sean Penn), a proud father and convenience store owner hardened by two years in prison yet softened by a loving wife (Laura Linney) and family; and Sean (Kevin Bacon), the responsible homicide detective whose marriage is near collapse.

When Jimmy’s 19-year-old daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum), is murdered on the same night that Dave comes home to his nervous wife, Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden), with blood on his hands, the movie’s core mystery builds. Is Dave the killer? And if so, what would possibly drive him to murder Jimmy’s daughter?

Conveniently, it’s up to Dave’s friend Sean and Sean’s partner, Whitey Powers (Laurence Fishburne), to find out before Jimmy gets his own ideas and decides to take matters into his own hands.

What ensues is good, occasionally powerful noir that’s been overhyped. This story of grief and revenge is indeed lifted by its fine performances – Penn, Bacon and Fishburne are all standouts – but it’s undermined by Robbins’ inability to connect with his troubled character, Eastwood’s failure to fully develop his female characters, and a pat plot hook involving a mute boy that’s a stretch.

It is curious. This is Eastwood’s 24th turn as a director, and what he has become as a director is nearly as interesting as the movies he’s directing. The man who once stood for vigilante justice in such box-office hits as “Dirty Harry,” “Magnum Force” and “The Enforcer,” now stands for sophistication, restraint and complexity of emotion. His camera has become his gun, his vision the bullet that leaves its mark.

“Mystic River” lacks the richness of Eastwood’s “Unforgiven,” but in Penn’s portrayal of Jimmy, it does find a character whose guilt, rage and neighborhood absolution stick with you after the movie ends.

Grade: B

On video and DVD

WILLARD, Written and directed by Glen Morgan, based on a screenplay by Gilbert Ralston, 105 minutes, PG-13.

Glen Morgan’s “Willard,” a remake of the 1971 original, is all flash and style. It favors camp over substance, a misreading of the original film, which had heart in spite of its B-movie underpinnings.

With an edge that is sometimes uncomfortably dark, Morgan’s movie stars Crispin Glover as Willard, a Norman Bates wannabe so relentlessly henpecked by his overbearing mother, Henrietta (Jackie Burroughs), and so cruelly berated by his boss, Frank (R. Lee Ermey), that he does what any sensible person would do in a similar situation. He befriends scores of rats and enlists them to do his dirty work.

The film begins promisingly with a slick title sequence that seems inspired by the work of Darren Aronofsky and David Fincher as filtered through a Nine Inch Nails video – lots of sketchy, scratchy images seething with malice. After that, the movie is off and slumming through Tim Burton territory, digging deep into the well of Willard’s basement to find a treasure of tiny souls eager for his affection.

To earn it, these rats – which multiply at a rate that suggests Willard’s basement is the city’s red light district – must learn a wealth of tactical maneuvers, such as how to chew through tires, wires and walls, and then as Willard’s home and work life become unreasonably hostile, how to attack on command.

Helping Willard is his favorite rat, Socrates – a genial, white puff of snow – and also his least-favorite rat, Ben, a lumbering sewer beast who longs for Willard’s affection the very way that Willard himself longs for the world’s affection. Unable to see the connection, Willard rejects Ben, thus igniting Ben’s rage and turning this movie into a fierce tug of war between the two.

Unfortunately, what Morgan never explains is the reason Willard rejects Ben and ultimately comes to mistreat him. Why does he dislike Ben so? By not exploring that crucial thread, this already fragile movie snaps, with all of the sympathy going to the rats and none of it to Willard, who, in the end, surfaces from the basement as the real beast.

Grade: C+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, at 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.