The opening scene of a child abduction by two paedophiles posing as cops is one of the most stomach-churning you will see all year and sets the tone for this dark thriller.

While playing hockey outside their clapboard houses in a blue collar Boston suburb young Dave is grabbed off the street and spends four days of abuse in a cellar before escaping.

(The sharp-eyed may notice one of the abductors has an ecclesiastical air about him in a knowing reference fo Boston's own Catholic bishop scandal).

The experience shatters the bond of friendship between the victim and his childhood buddies Jimmy and Sean and they drift apart.

Fast-forward a couple of decades and the three are still living in the same neighbourhood but are brought back together when the teenage daughter of Jimmy (Penn) is murdered.

Dave (Robbins) is now married with a son of his own but is still haunted by his fate at the hands of the abusers and is in denial to his wife Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden).

Sean (Bacon) is a homicide detective and the officer leading the inquiry into the death of Jimmy's daughter, who was shot, beaten and left to die in undergrowth.

Jimmy, a convicted thief, has put a life of crime behind him but is so consumed with a righteous black rage to find his daughter's killers he employs local muscle to help him.

Working equally efficiently as a police procedural and an insight into innocence lost, Eastwood has delivered his most impressive - and bleakest - movie since Unforgiven.

He employs a measured, richly-detailed and perfectly structured approach, neatly sketching in the characters while juggling the disparate plotlines.

If there is one flaw - and it is a big one - a bit of lateral thinking before the first hour is up will lead you to the perpetrator without a great deal of effort.

Nevertheless, it turns out it's not the who that really matter but the why and how this embroils the sticken Dave into the proceedings that really hits the mark.

The build-up is meticulously layered with hints and pointers gradually surfacing as both Jimmy and Sean find themselves in competition to catch the killer.

The cheesewire tension is only relaxed in the last, frankly uneccessary, act but by this time Clint's got you well and truly hooked.

Tim Evans