Review of Unforgiven (1992) by Alvin Y — 23 Jul 2012

Unforgiven, Great Movies.

Director Clint Eastwood's last Western is a grand one to have ridden out on. Dark, gripping, and embracing complex themes, *Unforgiven* is a saga of melancholy beauty and unflinching moral, physical, and historical realism. Eastwood received his belated due as a director with this, his 16th film, winning Best Picture, Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman, Editing, and Director at Oscars. It's a radical revision of his younger, iconic, supercool man with no name and few words. Graying gunmen, oppressed women, and the painful ugliness of death provide the dark matter. Debunking Western heroics, and a dime novelist rewriting and glamorizing the bloody events he witnesses, adds sardonic humor to the film's mix.

The movie is most fascinating in its revisionist approach to the mythology of the Old West, of dashing desperados and daring deeds, juxtaposed with the realities as recalled by Munny and Ned concerning the discomfort of sleeping on the trail, the misery of riding through the rain, and the ugly actuality of shooting a man, preferably when he's down. The settings are gorgeous and it punctuated with grim scenes of horror from the slashing of the young hooker to the inevitable final showdown.

Both Hackman and Freeman's performances are stand out, but there's an interesting dichotomy in Eastwood's own. Munny's pious utterances and his professed loss of appetite for killing don't ring entirely true, and when he's at last aroused at rage, the result is what Eastwood devotees have been awaiting with inappropriate anticipation. At the end. Munny becomes an amalgam of all the violent avenging riders Eastwood has portrayed over the years.

This is truly a fine piece of craftsmanship as one would expect from Clint Eastwood, who brings to the film all his understanding of a genre he single-handedly kept alive for more than 20 years when it was out of fashion. Touchingly, in its final grace note, the movie is dedicated to Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, Eastwood's late directorial mentors. He surely did them proud.