New to Netflix: an extremely gripping and superbly cast thriller double pack, best viewed one after the other!

An exciting movie night doesn’t necessarily have to consist of CGI material fights and lots of heavy riots for you? Do you value a good script, dense atmosphere, and strong acting instead? Then you should stick to Netflix, because with “Mystic River” and “The Town – Stadt ohne Grace” two top-class thrillers have migrated back to the subscription, which also have one thing in common: both films are set in the American city of Boston convenient.

And if, like the author of these lines, you have a special fondness for the East Coast city, where you can experience a mix of a leading education elite and a gritty, hard-working mentality that is almost unique in the United States, there is is of course no longer around “Mystic River” and “The Town”. Both films, which ultimately unfold more in the Irish-influenced working-class neighborhood of Boston, thrive in no small part on their wonderfully unfiltered local color.

This is “Mystical River”

It’s all about Jimmy (Sean Penn), Dave (Tim Robbins) and Sean (Kevin Bacon), who were inseparable when they were young. But then a traumatic event happened: Dave was kidnapped and brutally raped for days by two men. Suddenly nothing was like before. 25 years later, the men have largely forgotten their friendship when their paths cross again in the same Boston suburb. Jimmy’s 19-year-old daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum), is brutally murdered after a night of partying.

The investigation in this case is led by Sean, who has made it far with the police. As Sean and his partner Whitey (Laurence Fishburne) slowly close in on the culprit, a distraught Jimmy seeks revenge and launches his own investigation with his cronies. Dave, one of the last people in the bar to see Katie alive, is targeted by the police. Especially since he came home with serious stab wounds the night of the murder…

In the official FILMSTARTS review, Clint Eastwood’s gripping thriller drama received a solid 4.5 out of 5 stars. In his conclusion, Carsten Baumgardt describes the film as “A beautiful, excellent work that clearly stands out from the crowd of Hollywood productions. Dark, moral and immoral at the same time, believable and gripping – just great cinema.”

This is the “town”

Doug McRay (Ben Affleck) along with his buddies Jem (Jeremy Renner), Gloansy (Slaine) and Desmond (Owen Burke) have robbed a bank on behalf of the ruthless Fergie (Pete Postlethwaite). But this time things don’t go as smoothly as usual: Jem insults a bank clerk and briefly takes clerk Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) hostage. He later even insists on killing her for allegedly seeing too much.

Doug does everything he can to prevent this from happening and goes after Claire himself to find out if she really knows anything – and romantic feelings soon come into play here. Meanwhile, Jem becomes increasingly unpredictable. Together with client Fergie, he pushes for more raids, while an FBI special unit led by agents Frawley (Jon Hamm) and Dino Ciampa (Titus Welliver) has long since joined the gang’s heels.

In the official FILMSTARTS review, Ben Affleck’s “The Town” received a strong 4 out of 5 possible stars. Our critic Björn Becher writes in his conclusion: “’The Town’ is really good and exciting cinema because the ingredients are in front of and behind the camera. Affleck proves once again that he could be one of the greats as a director and that a career similar to that of Clint Eastwood seems conceivable for him too. How he brings about a meeting of McRay, Jem and Claire, who knows one of Jem’s tattoos and was able to unravel the secret that plagues Suspense, is masterful. The action is also on point, so you’ll be happy to forgive the characters’ overly sketchy accusations.