Unforgiven ***** (1992, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris) – Classic Movie Review 2397

Star-producer-director Clint Eastwood’s dark, violent and complex 1992 Western is his first after a long gap since Pale Rider in 1985. Unforgiven is now hailed as one of the genre’s greatest. It triumphed as only the third Western to win the Oscar for Best Picture, following Cimarron (1931) and Dances with Wolves (1990).

It is the winner of four Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman (who also won a similar Bafta and Golden Globe award) and Best Film Editing (Joel Cox). There were five other Oscar nominations.

Oscar nominated Eastwood gives one of his most notable performances as William Munny, an old, retired gunman now eking out a living as a pig farmer, who is reluctantly tempted back into killing when he takes on one last job to pick up his share of a reward offered by prostitutes after one of their number is viciously cut up and permanently scarred by two cowboy clients.

The prostitutes’ bounty also attracts a young gun billing himself as ‘The Schofield Kid’ (Jaimz Woolvett), who seeks Munny out. Munny is a widower, still grieving over the long-ago death of his beloved wife, trying to bring up two children. At first Munny refuses to be involved but eventually links up with the Kid and calls on his old partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) for help too.

In his Best Supporting Actor role, Gene Hackman is stupendously powerful, terrifyingly so, as Bill Daggett, the vicious town sheriff who literally kicks English outlaw Bob (Richard Harris) out of town and tortures Munny’s buddy Logan.

A film of complex and dubious moral ambiguities is set in a world where, other than the scarred hooker, the most ‘innocent’ folk perhaps are ironically the two clients, who try to redeem themselves by keeping the faith in returning the horses Daggett has set as the retribution for slashing the hooker, and especially the younger cowboy, who honorably offers an extra horse to the scarred prostitute. But they become the Unforgiven, as the hookers chip in with all their cash to have them hunted down and killed. So, you see, there are no ‘innocent’ folk in the hellish Unforgiven world.

It is a long, 131-minute epic Western, brilliantly achieved with a driving pace and no sense of strain. It is rough, wise and totally at ease with itself, its world and its ideas, a bit like Eastwood himself. This success must be shared with David Webb Peoples, the writer of the distinguished original screenplay, which richly deserved the Oscar it didn’t win.

The production by art directors Henry Bumstead and Rick Roberts, and set decorator Janice Blackie-Goodine, is superb. And the Technicolor cinematography by Jack N Green is exquisite, all shot on perfectly chosen, amazing looking locations in Alberta, Canada.

Eastwood directs it with his practised, accustomed flair and generosity, and allows his fellow grizzled veteran actors plenty of room to shine. He ensures that this is an adult and gripping movie, with a great sense of atmosphere, mood, tension, character and feel for the West.

Also in the cast are Saul Rubinek as the cowardly journalist W W Beauchamp, Frances Fisher outstanding as the head prostitute, Anna Thomson, Anthony James, David Mucci, Rob Campbell, Tara Dawn Frederick, Beverley Elliott, Josie Smith, Lisa Repo-Martell, Shane Meier, Aline Levasseur, Cherrilene Cardinal, Robert Kroons, Ron White, Mina E Mina, Henry Kope, Jeremy Ratchford, Jefferson Mappin and Walter Marsh.

The score is by Lennie Niehaus. Eastwood wrote ‘Claudia’s Theme’.

Unforgiven was an enormous success – on a budget of $14.4 million it took in $159.2 million at the box office, most of it in America where it grossed $101,157,447. But Eastwood said it would be his last Western so that he didn’t repeat himself or imitate someone else’s work. He dedicated it to his mentors, the late directors and Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. It is a shame that he didn’t win the Best Actor Oscar, and he was probably a bit unlucky to lose out to Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman.

‘The movie summarised everything I feel about the Western,’ said Eastwood. ‘The moral is the concern with gunplay.’

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2397

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