The movie Clint Eastwood said was an accidental “companion piece” to ‘Unforgiven’

In a career that dates back almost 70 years, there isn’t much Clint Eastwood hasn’t done. Iconic actor, acclaimed director, generational superstar, action hero, and even a former mayor; the legend has accomplished more in his career on either side of the camera than most can ever manage on one.

He’s starred in several of the most influential films of all time, including Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy, the endlessly quotable Dirty Harry, and magnum opus Unforgiven, and shows no signs of slowing down even into his ninth decade, an age when the majority of his contemporaries are either happily retired or six feet under. Eastwood’s journey is perhaps one of the more storied in Hollywood because of two things: his iconic stoicism when performing and his jump out of the spotlight and into the director’s chair.

Now 40 features deep into his directorial efforts, Eastwood is far from the only actor to turn his hand to directing, but he’s arguably the most famous example. After all, if he’s the benchmark fellow actors-turned-directors like George Clooney, Ben Affleck, and Bradley Cooper want to emulate, then it’s hard to argue with their choice for the gold standard.

The pinnacle of his directing exploits came with 1992’s gunslinging Unforgiven, which won him his first two Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’. On the surface, there’s not much that would link his western swansong to Dennis Lehane’s adaptation, Mystic River, a dozen years later, with the latter a noir-inspired crime thriller set in the modern day.

Having said that, in an interview with the BBC, Eastwood drew parallels between the two: “I didn’t purposely try to find a companion piece to Unforgiven, but I guess, without thinking about it too deeply, I am interested in the results of violence and the effects of it on the perpetrator as well as the victim.”

“I’ve always been fascinated with the stealing of innocence. It’s the most heinous crime, and certainly a capital crime if there ever was one,” he continued. “I think anything to do with crimes against children is something that’s very strong in my mind. So, that’s what attracted me to this story – the fact that it comes back in adulthood, and things keep coming around. I just liked the story and figured I had to do it.”

They might be markedly different movies in every respect, but the lingering effects of violence are prevalent in both. For Unforgiven‘s William Munny, he put down his six-shooter and tried to live a quiet life until he was forced to embrace the darkest aspects of himself that he’d sworn to leave behind for good.

In Mystic River, the murdered daughter of Sean Penn’s Jimmy Markum serves as the inciting incident, with the grieving father taking it upon himself to mount an investigation of his own, one that dredges up dark secrets and revelations that were long thought buried.

Eastwood’s two Oscar-winning features may not seem like obvious companion pieces, but they share enough shared thematic DNA that the director who directed them both was aware of their similarities.

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