The Reel Review
An aging outlaw widower trying to raise two kids on a hog farm in Kansas teams up with his former partner in crime as well as a young new outlaw after sex workers at an 1880 brothel in Wyoming put a $1000 bounty on two men for mutilating a prostitute. Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman star in this Oscar-winning 1992 Western which Eastwood also directed.
At its heart, Eastwood’s movie is about the corruptive power of money and righting wrongs of the past. As an added bonus, he does so while also upending Western tropes. In Unforgiven, incompetence and cowardice is abundant. Outlaws are the heroes, lawmen are corrupt and famous gunslingers – one expertly portrayed by the late Richard Harris – are exposed as frauds. Sweeping vistas show the expansiveness of the American West, its towns seeming small and claustrophobic by comparison. There is symbolism everywhere – some obvious, with cash-obsessed names like Eastwood’s Edward “Munny,” Harris’ English “Bob” (an English monetary unit) and Hackman’s “Bill” – others less obvious, like Bill’s lopsided house, a representation of his own lopsided sense of justice.
Eastwood’s Oscar-winning direction is at its pinnacle in Unforgiven, working from a clever script from David Webb Peoples and an abundance of fascinating characters, including Eastwood’s then partner, Frances Fisher, as Strawberry Alice. The ending is also an emotional gut punch, Eastwood’s main character both an archetype and anti-hero. Unforgiven is an outstanding Western – perhaps the best ever made.
REEL FACTS
• The boots Clint Eastwood wore in Unforgiven are the same ones he wore in 1959’s Rawhide, bookending his career in Westerns.
• Screenwriter David Webb Peoples (Blade Runner) had already written and sold the script for Unforgiven in 1976, but Eastwood waited 15 years for the right time, before making it into a movie.
• Unforgiven won four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director (Eastwood), Best Supporting Actor (Hackman), and Best Film Editing (Joel Cox).
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