1992--Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood

 

1992--Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood

Nominated: The Crying Game, A Few Good Men, Howard's End, Scent of a Woman

Should have won: Unforgiven

Be sure to see: Aladdin, Army of Darkness, Candyman, Dead Alive, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle,

Last of the Mohicans

“It's a hell of a thing killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have”--Will Munny

     Only the third western to win best picture but the second in three years, scriptwriter David Webb Peoples says Unforgiven is an anti-violence, protecting women film originally titled “The Cut-Whore Killings”. Sheriff Bill Daggett (perfectly played by Gene Hackman, but then again has he ever been miscast?), denies justice to a prostitute who has been cut. The other women send a kid to hire Will Munny to shoot the culprits. Munny is a widower and farmer. Considering it has been 11 years since he has fired a gun, he's out of the game and can't even mount his horse without falling off, but he accepts the money to support his children. Will and his friend Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) team up with a kid to take the manhunt.

     All of the characters are painted as individuals. The kid talks big and claims to have killed five men but when the action pops up he seems shaky. Ned has a moment of truth behind the trigger as well. The kid finally comes into his own after getting news from one of the prostitutes and when Will gets word of something tragic, travels to town to confront Daggett's men, and he comes into his own as well...and does he ever!

     The movie really belongs to Hackman. He played a similar role in the tongue-in-cheek The Quick and the Dead which is impossible to take seriously despite being presented in a serious way, as per director Sam Raimi's style. Here, he spreads fear just by his presence. I especially like the scene between him and a writer named Beauchamp in jail with a possibly loaded gun.

     The movie is a revenge story. The prostitutes want revenge against the men who injured one of them. And Will gets his own revenge later when the simple bounty to support his children becomes a little more personal. Like a western should have, there is a big shootout. It is one against many and in the real world the fight would be over in five seconds but not in an Eastwood movie . What happens is incredible yet, somehow, it is easy to believe. The shooting was set off by Will getting revenge for a body being put on display. He takes it out on the owner of the establishment. The man is played by Anthony James. This is a guy who keeps popping up the more I watch movies and he is always a sleazeball. In The Naked Gun 2 ½, The Teacher, Vanishing Point, In the Heat of the Night (another best picture winner), and as the owner of the whorehouse in this movie where he makes a grand exit, he always plays someone who is easy to dislike. The scene is capped off with Old Glory waving over the hero's shoulder. Was it on purpose?

     Clint Eastwood opted the script in 1983 but wanted the character to be older. So he waited until 1991 to begin filming. I guess he didn't believe in makeup. But it was well worth the wait. It won awards for best picture, supporting actor for Hackman, editing, and Eastwood won the directing award. It is Eastwood's tenth western and he has said it “summarized everything I feel about a western.” The western seems to be a dying genre. Occasionally one will pop up young movie goers seem to like such as Tombstone but they typically aren't big with fans. Hopefully the True Grit remake or Django Unchained offered a new surge in the genre. Unforgiven is a solid example of the genre. A good place for someone wanting to get into westerns to begin. It is not happy. It is dark. It is grim. It is very good.