Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Deserve's Got Nothin' To Do WIth It

Unforgiven

1992, dir. Clint Eastwood
Stars Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris, Saul Rubinek, Frances Fisher, Jaimz Woolvett
2 hours 11 minutes

Clint Eastwood’s last Western played Monday night at The Mayfair. Winner of four 1992 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Unforgiven is the story of an aging former gunslinger and killer William Munny (Eastwood) who is brought back from retirement, sobriety, and quiet family life, by a young excited bounty hunter (Woolvett) to kill two cowboys who had maimed and disfigured a young prostitute, after which her fellow brothel co-workers pooled together $1,000 to place on their heads. Munny recruits his former partner (Freeman), for the job, but each of the trio find that they are no longer the men they used to be, or want to be, or both.

This is the underlying theme of the film, and maybe even the purpose of it, from Eastwood’s perspective as the director. It is indeed the last Western he made (so far, though I think it’ll stick), and throughout the film the idea of legend versus truth comes into play. The brothel is in town run and presided over by sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Hackman), who has no patience for vigilantes or violence, except by his own hand, that is. Before the aforementioned trio arrive into town, a famous assassin, English Bob (Harris) comes into town to seek the bounty, complete with his own biographer (Rubinek) to record (and embellish) every detail for history’s sake. Little Bill and English Bob have a past together, and within minutes of Bob showing up into town, Little Bill takes his guns, beats him up, and locks him in the town jail. There Little Bill explains to the biographer the difference between the legends of the West and the reality of it.

After that, Munny and his group arrive into town to take on the job, but only Munny finds that he has the stomach to be a killer. Ironically, he had been the most reluctant of the three. Little Bill takes matters into his own hands after the job is done, requiring Munny to return to town to enact revenge on him.

With Unforgiven, Eastwood had crafted what many called a fitting eulogy to the Western genre, although there have been a few great Westerns in the 17 years since, including Tombstone, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and the HBO television series Deadwood. Those, however, have all been revisionist Westerns, much in the mold of Unforgiven, so perhaps it would be more accurate to call Unforgiven Eastwood’s passing of the torch to another generation.

5 stars.

Saw by myself at the Mayfair.

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