Essential Clint Eastwood - Mystic River / The Bridges Of Madison County / Gran Torino / Blood Work / Unforgiven / Invictus (DVD, Boxed set)

Mystic River
Jimmy. Dave. Sean. Friends who grew up in working-class Boston, they drift apart after a terrible tragedy. Years later, brutal events reconnect them. Jimmy's 19-year-old daughter is coldly murdered. Dave is a suspect. And Sean, now a cop, scrambles to solve the crime before volatile Jimmy takes the law into his own hands. Working from Brian Helgaland's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel, Clint Eastwood directs a masterwork featuring an all-star cast. A brooding thriller built on family, friends and innocence lost. Starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins and Laurence Fishburne.

The Bridges Of Madison County
World-travelling National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid and Iowa housewife Francesca Johnson aren't looking to turn their lives upside down. Each is at a point in life where expectations are behind them. Yet four days after meeting, they won't want to lose the love they've found. Academy Award winners Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood (who also produces and directs) bring blazing starpower and powerful conviction to the beloved characters of Robert James Waller's rhapsodic bestseller of love, choice and consequence.

Gran Torino
Clint Eastwood stars as retired auto worker Walt Kowalski, who fills his days with home repair, beer and monthly trips to the barber. The people he once called his neighbors have all moved or passed away, replaced by Hmong immigrants, from Southeast Asia, he despises. Resentful of virtually everything he sees, Walt is just waiting out the rest of his life. Until the night someone tries to steal his `72 Gran Torino. The Gran Torino brings his shy teenaged neighbor Thao into his life when Hmong gangbangers pressure the boy into trying to steal it. But Walt stands in the way of both the heist and the gang, making him the reluctant hero of the neighborhood - especially to Thao's mother and older sister, Sue, who insist that Thao work for Walt as a way to make amends. Though he initially wants nothing to do with these people, Walt eventually gives in and puts the boy to work fixing up the neighborhood, setting into motion an unlikely friendship that will change both their lives.

Blood Work
Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood produces, directs and stars as FBI Profiler Terry McCaleb in this absorbing and edgy thriller based on the acclaimed best selling novel by Michael Connelly. Unrelenting in his pursuit of justice, McCaleb is fast closing in on his latest adversary - a psychopath dubbed "The Code Killer". Hot on the killer's tracks, McCaleb suffers a massive heart attack, leaving the crimes open as he is forced into early retirement. Two years later, a beautiful stranger walks into his life and reveals that McCaleb's life was actually saved by the death of her murdered sister. Against the advice of his doctor, and with the help of his neighbour, McCaleb feels compelled to hunt down the murderer who has forced him to take this case personally.

Unforgiven
In the Academy Award-winning Best Picture Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman play retired, down-on-their-luck outlaws who pick up their guns one last time to collect a bounty offered by the vengeful prostitutes of the remote Wyoming town of Big Whiskey. Richard Harris is an ill-fated interloper, a colourful killer-for-hire called English Bob. And Gene Hackman is the sly and brutal local sheriff who's brand of law enforcement ranges from unconventional to ruthless. Big trouble is coming to Big Whiskey.

Invictus
He was imprisoned 27 years for his heroic fight against apartheid. So what does Nelson Mandela do after he is elected president of South Africa? He rejects revenge, forgives his oppressors and finds hope of national unity in an unlikely place: the rugby field. Clint Eastwood powerfully directs an uplifting film about a team and a people inspired to greatness. In a performance that won him the National Board of Review’s Best Actor Award and an Academy Award nomination, Morgan Freeman portrays Mandela, who asks the national rugby team captain (Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nominee Matt Damon) and his underdog squad to do the impossible and win the World Cup. One team, one country. The universal language of sports has never spoken so thrillingly as in Eastwood’s Invictus.