10. Mystic River (2003)
Tomatometer: 87 percent

With Clint Eastwood behind the camera and Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, and Marcia Gay Harden in front of it, the film adaptation of Dennis Lehane's Mystic River was pretty much a gimme for one of the highest-profile releases of 2003, and it didn't disappoint, netting four Oscar noms (and two wins), almost $100 million in domestic gross, and enough positive reviews to earn an 87 percent Tomatometer. Although critics were quick to point out that Mystic River doesn't equal or surpass Eastwood's finest work, his trademark no-frills approach made a good fit for the source material, and the performances from the stellar cast were as strong as you'd expect. Empire Magazine's Alan Morrison reflected the sentiments of many of his peers when he wrote, "While not quite the equal of the novel, it's more complex, emotionally-charged and better acted than the average Hollywood thriller."

9. White Hunter, Black Heart (1990)
Tomatometer: 90 percent

The easy (and, it must be said, mostly fair) knock against Eastwood as an actor is that his characters tend to occupy a fairly narrow emotional bandwidth -- one best reflected by Eastwood's natural gift for portraying flinty, no-nonsense types. Squint your eyes and speak in a whispery growl, and odds are you'll be doing a fair-to-middling Eastwood impression -- with the notable exception of his performance in 1990's White Hunter, Black Heart, where he takes Peter Viertel's thinly fictionalized account of John Huston's conduct on the set of 1951's The African Queen and uses it as an excuse to plumb the depths of a man's soul -- and turns in one of the bravest and most atypical performances of his career. Eastwood's steady-handed direction offered fitting support for his performance; as Janet Maslin of the New York Times wrote, the movie "makes it clear that his directorial ambitions have by now outstripped his goals as an actor."

Warning: clip is NSFW -- offensive language.