You have to hand it to the Coen Brothers for making 2010’s “True Grit” into such a well made and entertaining movie, because as far as I’m concerned, Clint Eastwood gave the Western genre its victorious last stand in “Unforgiven.”
“Unforgiven” is brilliant for being the last truly old fashioned Western and yet also a modern elegy of it. Eastwood starred in enough Westerns in his career to know how the genre ticked, and his characters in “Unforgiven” display unsuspected depth that expand on all the themes common to the genre without harming its integrity. It’s a film from the early ’90s but fits into the canon of Westerns as well as any.
Beyond that, “Unforgiven” is an important landmark in the career of a great actor and director. It’s an imperfect masterpiece; a human mark on the face of a titan.
Eastwood plays William Munny, a former killer in the West who has now grown old and tame as he started a family. Three years after the death of his wife, he’s a lonely and hopeless pig farmer. The new bounty hunter on the block is the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), and he needs a partner. Will however hasn’t pointed a gun at a man in 10 years. The cowboys they aim to kill mutilated a prostitute, and the other girls in the brothel have put a $1000 price tag on the cowboys’ heads. But protecting the town from any bounty hunters is the corrupt and ruthless Sheriff Little Bill (Gene Hackman).
The world in “Unforgiven” is cold and dangerous, where even the law is heartless and scary. But the stunning horizons and bright blue skies paint a pastoral picture that is not “glamorous,” but still beautiful. Nobility remains in this world, however dated it may seem. Continue reading “Unforgiven (1991)”