
Title: Unforgiven
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Written by: David Webb Peoples
Current Flickchart position: #332 of 1360 overall. My #9 film, of 38, from the year 1992.
What It’s About:
Retired Old West gunslinger William Munny (Clint Eastwood) reluctantly takes on one last job, with the help of his old partner (Morgan Freeman) and a young man.
General Comments:
Didn’t have a chance to watch a noir film today, but I finally saw Unforgiven all the way through. A pretty decent Western that’s nowhere near as good as 3:10 to Yuma, True Grit or Deadwood. Overall it’s just too nice and clean. There’s none the gritty ruggedness that I like with modern Westerns. Eastwood is of course fantastic and Gene Hackman makes a good bad guy (even though he’s not really a bad guy), but everyone else is rather average. After watching Deadwood I find it kind of weird that the partner of Will is a black guy, and that there was no racist element in that. Seems to me that there would, or should, of been some comments by various characters as to Will and Ned’s relationship. The one interesting thing about the film was that Will, Ned and the Kid are all bad guys. They’re the murderers and hired guns, and Little Bill is the Sheriff trying to protect his community. The black hats and white hats are usually well defined in these sorts of films, but the film does well by switching the allegiance the audience is likely to have to the characters, and making the audience root for the bad guy without really knowing it.
Watch Unforgiven to see Clint Eastwood in a fairly modern Western and because it’s pretty decent by ’90s standards.
Rating: 6/10

