BOOK ENDS.

Byline: RICHARD WILLIAMSON

MYSTIC RIVER (15)

DON'T expect car-wrecking chases, bar-busting punch-ups and gory gun battles in Clint Eastwood's sombre tale of a brutal murder that brings dark secrets bubbling up from the past.

This is a character-led movie rather than one driven by a violence-peppered plot.

So treat yourself to a couple of hours of gripping tension in a movie that seethes with an emotional cocktail of grief, suppressed rage, revenge, guilt and betrayal.

Childhood pals Sean, Dave and Jimmy are out playing on the street when a pair of paedophiles snatches one of them.

By the time he escapes, Dave has been horribly abused. The friendship is broken and it's not until another tragedy hits them that they are drawn back together as adults.

Jimmy (Sean Penn) is plunged into unimaginable turmoil when his 19-year-old daughter is murdered.

The cop investigating the crime is Sean (Kevin Bacon) and Dave (Tim Robbins) is a suspect.

An unlikely coincidence? Perhaps, but one of the key themes of the movie is a sense of close neighbourhoods and small communities where nobody ever drifts far from their roots.

The physical wounds may have healed but Dave has never recovered from the trauma he suffered as a child and he cannot forget that nobody came to rescue him. Jimmy is a petty crook with a shady past, murky secrets and a determination to kill whoever murdered his beloved daughter. Sean is struggling with a broken marriage.

Penn writhes in silent agony at the pain of his loss, Robbins is less flamboyant as he teeters on the brink of total collapse and Bacon goes for buttoned-up, controlled coolness.

Add Laurence Fishburne as the impatient cop who sets in train a tragic sequence of events and you're not going to be complaining about a lack of talent.

Director Eastwood lets the tension simmer rather than boil over, allowing the story to play out in its own time.

Violence is used sparingly and, consequently, has far more dramatic impact than the excesses that have become the norm in the search for cheap thrills.

But the key to a movie about three men haunted by their past and struggling to hide the emotional damage is the quality of the performances. You don't get a much better cast than this.

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (12A)

WELL SHORT OF

EXTRAORDINARY

SEAN CONNERY

GROWING DANGER... a group of heroes must save the world from The Phantom in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

FORGET the fact that all the characters have been filched from rather more distinguished works of fiction.

Ignore the absurdities, like an immense submarine that somehow manages to fit into the teeny canals of Venice.

That may sound like damning with faint praise but it's as far as I'm willing to go.

Yet another comic strip-inspired movie finds us in the year 1899 with the world on the brink of a war provoked by a dastardly villain called The Phantom.

In a last desperate bid to thwart the masked monster, the British Government calls together a special team of gentlemen - and one lady - who all have unique skills.

It may be donkey's years since he went in search of King Solomon's Mines but Alan Quartermain (Sean Connery) is still a tough old stick with the instincts of the great white hunter.

Piratical Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah) surfaces from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea to provide transport.

Then we have the light-fingered Invisible Man (Tony Curran), and Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend) who is immortal for as long as he doesn't peep at the portrait of himself in the attic.

We also have vampire Mina Harker (Peta Wilson) from Dracula and Dr Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) and special agent Tom Sawyer (Shane West) who has left the Mississippi to become a secret agent.

The tone is Boy's Own adventure, with a double-dyed villain lurking round every corner and lots of derring-do from the heroes in a movie full of all the usual tricks.

MINCING MACCA CAMPS AT HOME

PARTY MONSTER (18)

IF you still think of Macaulay Culkin as the cute Home Alone kid, then prepare for a shock.

Now he's playing a mincing queen with a girly giggle and a big drug habit.

This based-on-truth story tells how Michael Alig arrives from the sticks to make a name for himself in New York.

After striking up a bitchy relationship with the flamboyantly gay James St James (Seth Green) he finds notoriety in the 1980s clubbing scene as leader of the party kids.

This involves wearing extraordinary make-up and bizarre clothes, eating Ecstasy and holding impromptu raves everywhere from fast-food shops to the back of a truck.

But drugs are his downfall and he ends up murdering his dealer, Angel (Wilson Cruz).

I'm not giving anything away because we are told this in the first five minutes and the rest of the movie is an account of how all that chronic self-indulgence came to such a terrible end.

It's difficult to know if it's meant to be an expose of these trivial poltroons or a celebration of some of the most obnoxious, self-centred, empty, useless and pointless people you're ever likely to see on the screen.

The more they rejoice in their superficiality, the less sympathetic these gaudy characters become.

These are not gorgeous butterflies cruelly crushed by a heartless world. They are irritating mosquitoes buzzing round the room before fatally colliding with the lightbulb.

BOLLYWOOD QUEEN (PG)

THIS well-meaning but rather feeble movie tentatively explores the East meets West conundrum of modern Britain.

Geena (Preeya Kalidas) falls for a white boy named Jay (James McAvoy) and the sari-crossed lovers are caught on opposite sides in a rag-trade war.

The twist is that Geena imagines herself as a Bollywood heroine. This is the cue for fantasy sequences in which everyone bursts into song.

The young stars have plenty of charm but the movie aims to be chirpy rather than face the important issues.