Clint Eastwood's Masterpiece: Unforgiven (1992)

I had to watch this for a film class in college. It's great, but I just can't get too engaged by it for some reason.

Neoolong doesn't care about old people.

Can't agree more with everything you said about it. There are essentially no flaws with Unforgiven. If western films ceased to be made after it I would have no complaints. But there have been other westerns besides Open Range that have deserved praise. The Proposition, 3:10 to Yuma, Assassination of Jesse James, Seraphim Falls, etc. Nowhere near as good as Unforgiven, but still deserving of a mention.

I think this was the first western that made me change my mind on the genre. Like most teenagers, I didn't like westerns. But this movie just knocked me for a loop. What really threw me was how realistic it approached death and that when someone was shot they don't just fall to ground. Yeah, I still had that impression.

What also blew me away, and I don't think I could have adequately explained this at the time (I'm still not sure I can do it now), is the balance between deconstructing the genre's conventions, while at the same time upholding them.
It's a little weird how it worked out but instead of pushing me to dismiss the standard tropes of the genre, it really made me appreciate them. There's no way I could have enjoyed something like Stagecoach, without seeing Unforgiven first.

One of the most perfect scenes in the history of film? The final shootout scene.

Well, I just don't think there's any country for them.

Yes there is. It's called Florida.

"All right, I'm coming out. Any man I see out there, I'm gonna shoot him. Any sumbitch takes a shot at me, I'm not only gonna kill him, but I'm gonna kill his wife, all his friends, and burn his damn house down."

This movie is pure greatness.

I was never a huge western fan. I saw this on TV back in the 90's and that made me rent the VHS. Loved it. When it came out on DVD I had to buy it and then just recently nabbed the 2 disc remastered one. One of the last few great Westerns and just films in general.

Pet peeve. When people say stuff like that I always wonder if they're just arbitrarily throwing out big round numbers. If Unforgiven is the best western in the last 20 years, then what was better than it from, say, 21-25 years ago? Silverado? Young Guns? It seems to me if you're going to make a statement like that, you need to give it a more specific context. Like, to find a western as good as Unforgiven, you have to go all the way back to The Wild Bunch.

I'm an absolute Eastwood loyalist, and I'd say The Assassination of Jesse James... comes pretty close to taking the "best western in 20 years" prize. It's a subtler, better looking, possibly more haunting film. Unforgiven gets a lot of love as a career capper, and it's an exceptional film, but it might not even be my favorite Eastwood western.

Well that begs the question...

I'm not sure. Probably The Outlaw Josey Wales. I waffle.

20 years is a pretty bold statement. I would argue someone who's said that, doesn't really watch westerns.

In the last 20 years? Shit, in the 16 since Unforgiven there haven't been a whole lot. But I don't use the definition of anything with a horse, cowboy hat, gun or desert = western.

I guess what I'm getting at, is there's quite a range of movie ideals when it comes to defining a western. On one side of the spectrum you got extreme cartoon violence, one shot one kills, etc. And on the other side you got extreme realism, like what you got in Unforgiven.

I will say Unforgiven is one of the best westerns made in which if I was given the task I would probably put about 10 to 15 other films in that bunch. And the list would cover a dramatic range in the western spectrum.

Really. How many westerns have there been since 1988? How many good ones?

Good ones?

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Unforgiven
Tombstone
Edit: Dead Man (thanks, Greg)

I didn't see Open Range or Wyatt Earp. Some people are calling No Country For Old Men a Western, but that's crazy talk.

Really good westerns in the past 20 years:

Unforgiven
Dead Man
Three Burials of Melquiadas Estrada
Jesse James
The Proposition
Open Range

Really enjoyable/solid ones:

Seraphim Falls
3:10 to Yuma
Maverick

This category doesn't get a lot of play, sadly, and most of the time it's more stuff that uses the Western stuff as window dressing rather than explore the tropes of the genre. Then there's stuff like No Country and There Will Be Blood where it's up in the air just how much of it qualifies as a Western.

I wonder if Deadwood counts, I know it's film we're talking about but I'd consider Deadwood one of the finest TV series about the west in the last 20 years.

Again, were there others? Faint goddamn praise against Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, innit?

I liked "Paradise." Anybody remember that show?

Just rewatched this again, and it gets better and better every time.

Quick question for alla youse: what happens to Clyde the one-armed deputy? He sort of disappears after his cool introductory scene.

Silverado is pretty goddamn great, even if it is kind of the anti-Unforgiven. Unforgiven is a better movie, but Silverado is something I revisit a lot more often.

Got the bluray from Best Buy a couple of weeks back for 7.99$ I believe Amazon still has that price crazy deal.

Its one of the best westerns ever. Eastwood says more about violence and killing with this one film than any of his others.

The tension and intensity of Munny's POV shot with that rain coming down and slowly panning by Freeman in that coffin with that sign on him walking into that saloon is amazing leading to one of my alltime favorite film quotes.

" You just shot an unarmed man! "

" Well he should have armed himself if he's gonna decorate his saloon with my friend! "

You know what I thought was a good western, The Claim. Saw it a while ago, but it was pretty cool. Don't know if any of you saw it.

Also The Good, The Bad, and The Weird was awesome.

Unforgiven is probably my third favorite Clint Eastwood Western, with The Outlaw Josey Wales at #2 and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly at #1.

UNFORGIVEN is a pretty solid film--some wonderful writing and performances--but it isn't a masterpiece. Clint's direction is never less than professional, but it's never too much more, either.

I'll take THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES as the best Western of the last twentysomething years.

I just saw this for the first time a few weeks ago. I was a bit disappointed in it as a whole, but there are parts I liked. What I can't believe is how silly the premise is for something played so seriously. The catalyst for the whole plot of this story is that a prostitute laughed at the size of a guy's penis. What?

Also, it was strange how Clint Eastwood spends the whole movie sincerely and credibly playing his character as a weak, broken down wuss, and then all of a sudden is inspired to turn into a massive badass in the final few minutes. It was a fun sequence, but what came before it makes it a bit of a head scratcher. I haven't enjoyed most supposedly classic Westerns I've seen, so maybe I have an anti-Western bias that prevented me from being totally satisfied with this movie.

Gene Hackman was great fun to watch, though. I especially liked his scene in the jail. I enjoyed the supporting characters and Eastwood's dialog about killing someone, but there were also a lot of scenes that didn't do much for me and the characters played by Freeman and Richard Harris were too underdeveloped. My favourite Western so far is "The Proposition". I hated "The Searchers" and got restless too quickly to give "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" and "The Wild Bunch" more than a few minutes of viewing time, so I need to give them a chance again someday.

That premise may be comical, but it's just an example of how life was cheap in those days - that a guy's wounded pride was more than enough reason for bloodshed to happen. It' played seriouly because it has serious consequences.

And I wouldn't call Clint's character a wuss: he's tired of killing, wise enough to try to avoid it. He doesn't want the macho bullshit anymore. But in the end, he resorts to violence nevertheless.

You're doing it wrong.

As for Will Munny being a broken down wuss, only to turn into a complete badass in the finale, well, that's kind of the point of the movie. He was always that gunslinging, murdering badass. It's his true nature. He gave it up for the woman he loves, locked it away deep inside himself, to try to play the part of a good man. He takes the bounty job for the money, thinking he can just pull it off and then go back to ignoring his past. But he can't, not without waking up the horrible stuff inside. So he gets his ass kicked, he freezes up, he can't do the job. Until Ned gets killed. Pay real close attention to that scene where he gets told Ned's been killed, when he takes the whiskey bottle and starts gulping it down. Watch Eastwood's face--this is the first time we get to meet the REAL William Munny. The monster's awake, and he can now go back to doing all the horrible things he used to do.

It's that moment, really, that the film's title is all about--by giving into his darker nature, even for what could be considered a noble cause by standard Western tropes (hunting down men who disfigured a woman, revenge on a corrupt sheriff who killed your best friend), William Munny damns himself. All the good he tried to do in his wife's name has been wasted, making him, well, Unforgiven.

I wouldn't even rate The Searchers as Ford's best western (too much awful comic relief; The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance, Fort Apache and My Darling Clementine are all better films, though perhaps less interesting to dissect), and though the dude's visual sense is peerless, as a fun introduction I think Hawks, Mann and Boetticher are all more accessible.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly and The Wild Bunch are both godhead, tho.

We gotta infect good threads with this shit now?

I figured I'd get flack for that, but rather than simply call "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" and "The Wild Bunch" shit because I didn't like them, I admit I probably just wasn't in the right mood to watch them. I think they require patience, which I didn't have at the time. I really gave it the old college try with "The Searchers", though, and I just found the whole thing very dated and I believe that all truly great films are timeless. A movie doesn't have to be newer for me to like it...I've enjoyed lots of movies from the 20s, for example.

Most of all I was appalled by what one-dimensional stereotypes the Natives were and even after reading Ebert's essay defending the movie as a product of its time, I still couldn't get past that or the fact that I found the story boring. On the plus side, John Wayne impressed me and I understood from the movie why he is so iconic. His voice, mannerisms, and charisma were immediately engaging (and continued to be for the whole movie) and I look forward to seeing him in better films.

I appreciate the explanation of Eastwood's character's arc in "Unforgiven". It makes a lot of sense, but it didn't come across as clearly to me when I was watching the movie. He was so quiet and passive until the end, I couldn't figure out what was going through his head, why he acted the way he did, and why he changed at the end. I'm not saying I need to have everything spelled out for me in a movie, but I think the movie could have been more convincing if that was its intention.

Rio Bravo, dude. All John Wayne being awesome, all the time.

Im more or less on board with you but I don't think it's that simple. In the past he killed for money, robbing someone or just plain fun. Here he embraces the dakrness one final time. Not for money but for his friend. He then goes back home to his kids and it seems as though he never goes back into his old life. I always read it more as he knows he is damned from all the things he did in the past so whats one last kill really? To me thats even more depressing because that means a man can never really change.

IMO, one of the twenty greatest films ever made.

Thanks for doing us the favor of not calling two of the best Westerns of all time shit. We really appreciate that. You're a true diplomat.


No. The movie was perfectly convincing. Everyone else in this board got it. There's an entire scene that exists to show the bad, old Eastwood coming out. It's right there on the screen and it couldn't be any more clear without banging you over the head with it. Like the guy said -- you're doing it wrong. Learn to watch movies.

There's a line between "I'm entitled to my opinion, man!" and "I am unable to understand a film unless it's explained to me point by point, ideally through voice over." You did not notice that line when you crossed it long ago.

And I'm on-board with all the Jesse James love. Fantastic movie.

A great film. I thought this was the definitive summation of the western genre until I saw THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD. Eastwood's best directorial effort, by a mile, IMO.

What I wonder about after watching Unforgiven now is what's happened to Eastwood since. Nothing that came after has anywhere near the balls. Well, I guess Million Dollar Baby did, but it's not as good of a movie.

He talks about it as a script he carried around "like a pocketwatch" for years, and he knew it was special, and just wanted to wait for things to fall into place to make it the way he wanted. He knew it was special around 1984.

And should we realistically expect multiple films on Unforgiven's level out of any director? I bet you can count on one hand the directors that are capable of it.

^^^Although that's a fair point, there's still a clear decline in going from "Deserves got nothing to do with it" and "We all go it coming", to him telling the kid in Grand Torino, of what it's like killing people in the war "Believe me, you don't want to know, you don't ever want to know..." Maybe I'm just a fatalistic bastard, but the disparity in complexity and mawkishness between those two is pretty big.

Let's just face it, the man's gotten soft in his old age.

In terms of movies, not life. I'd never call Clint Eastwood, the man, soft. But as a director? I don't see how it's really all that arguable.

ETA: although he does call his own, real life son, a pussy in his last movie. So there's that.

Yeah, there's certainly been a descent into mawkishness. In Gran Torino it works because the movie's basically self-parody with heart anyway, but as a rule I tend to stay away from Eastwood's movies these days. Which is a shame, considering not just Unforgiven but High Plains Drifter and White Hunter, Black Heart.

Oh, maybe not. Unforgiven might be in my top ten or twenty or so.

On the other hand, I think Oliver Stone's 100% bonafide masterpiece is JFK, but he's got a half dozen other movies that are pretty clearly made by a genius. I'm just saying that Eastwood the director is someone I'm generally lukewarm to, and watching Unforgiven, I just wonder 'Wow, where the hell did THAT come from?'

Might be a good thread on its own, the one transcendent work.

Same. I love Unforgiven, but there's something about Josey Wales that just wins me over more than Unforgiven does.

Could it be Sondra Locke?

Josey Wales is a great movie. In a vacuum I might place it even with Unforgiven. In context though, Unforgiven is by far ahead. In addition to being a great movie, it also has an amount of history that both the audiences and the participants bring with them that gives it a near mythical weight that few movies in the history of cinema can claim.

I gave "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" another chance. Watched it all the way through this time. Still doesn't do much for me. There were a few great scenes, and I appreciated how intense the performances were, but I was still disappointed overall. I still haven't seen a single Western that I could be totally satisfied with. I just keep finding the stories and performances shallow and underdeveloped.

That includes "Unforgiven", which I still think had quite one-dimensional characters, no matter how articulately you can describe them as being more...I just couldn't see it. I am going to watch "The Wild Bunch" soon. If I have the same reaction, I think I need to stay away from Westerns for awhile. I really want to like them. I know they're supposed to be landmarks in cinematic history, but maybe they're just not my thing and I'll never 'get' them.

By the way, Cokes, I don't like your suggestion that I need everything explained to me in voiceover. That's not the case at all. In fact, I generally hate narration, unless it's done in a really clever way like in "Goodfellas" or "Adaptation.". The reason I found the character blank in "Unforgiven" was not because he didn't narrate. We can understand what a character is thinking or feeling without them saying a word of narration if the acting and writing of actions and dialog is done carefully enough. I didn't think that was the case in "Unforgiven". I didn't think it was a bad movie, in my opinion it just wasn't a masterpiece and it wasn't as powerful and resonant as it's trying to be or worthy of best picture.

I can't believe siskel didn't like this.

http://bventertainment.go.com/tv/bue...sec=unforgiven

I agree with them. I think I liked it a little more than they did in that review, though.

Yeah Unforgiven is great - it is Bill O'Reilly's favorite movie for good reason. Smart folks get this film and appreciate all of the different levels that it works on. Hard for me to believe that it is nearly 20 years old... man, time flies...