Clint Eastwood’s crowning achievement, the masterpiece known as Unforgiven. The film that reinvigorated a genre known as the American Western.
The story begins in 1878, William Munny (Clint Eastwood) is an aging pig farmer just scraping to get by. Then one day out of the blue a young man comes to his farm, claiming to know of a large bounty placed on the heads of some roughnecks that cut up a woman in a small Wyoming town. He claims to know of Munny’s past, a past full of unspeakable evils that seem out of place on
the face of the farmer that we see before us. Unforgiven is unapologetic in its depiction of the human condition. It is a world where the lines of good and evil are blurred, where past and future are constantly colliding to form a vision of the Wild West that has few film equals.
Clint Eastwood stars in the film as the reformed outlaw (Eastwood also produced and directed the film as well). A man that, through even the best of intentions, may not be able to escape the misdeeds of his past no matter how hard he tries. Eastwood turns in a tender performance, and yet still is able to give off that Eastwood rough charm that is the hallmark of his early Western work and beyond. You can absolutely see the love that Eastwood has for the genre that made him.
With particularly insightful performances by the always great Morgan Freeman, as Munny’s good friend Ned, and Gene Hackman as Sheriff “Little” Bill Daggett out of the small Wyoming town of Big Whiskey (great name by the way). Interesting side note, Gene Hackman initially turned down the role because he did ...
