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Unforgiven is a 1992 American Western film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood with a screenplay written by David Webb Peoples. The film tells the story of William Munny, an aging outlaw and killer who takes on one more job years after he had hung up his guns and turned to farming. A dark Western that deals frankly with the uglier aspects of violence and the myth of the Old West, it stars Eastwood in the lead role, with Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, andRichard Harris.
Eastwood dedicated the movie to deceased directors and mentors Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. The film won four Academy Awards including Best Actor in a Supporting Role(Hackman), Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Picture. Eastwood himself was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, but he lost to Al Pacinofor Scent of a Woman. Unforgiven was inducted into the United States National Film Registry in 2004.
The film was only the third western to win the Oscar for Best Picture following Cimarron (1931) and Dances With Wolves (1990).
Plot
A group of prostitutes in Big Whiskey, Wyoming, offers a $1000 reward to whoever can kill two cowboys who disfigured one of them (Anna Levine). This upsets the local sheriff, a former gunfighter known as Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), who doesn't allow guns or assassins in his town.
Miles away, in Kansas, the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), an arrogant and boastful young man, visits the farm of William Munny (Clint Eastwood), seeking to recruit him to kill the cowboys. In his youth, Munny was an infamous bandit, killer and drinker, but is now a widower raising two children on a pig farm. Though Munny initially refuses to help with the assassination, his pigs are sick, putting his children's future in jeopardy, so he reconsiders a few days later and sets off to catch up with the Kid. On his way, Munny recruits Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), another retired gunfighter who reluctantly leaves his wife to go along on the hit.
Back in Wyoming, gunfighter English Bob (Richard Harris) and his biographer W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek) arrive in Big Whiskey, also seeking the reward. Little Bill and his deputies disarm English Bob and Little Bill savagely beats him in the street, hoping to set an example for other would-be assassins. While Bob is in jail, Little Bill plays a psychological game in which Beauchamp is allowed to present a firearm to Bob: Bob, believing this to be an unloaded gun trick, refuses to take the firearm (and is openly upset when Bill shows it to be loaded). The next morning, Bob is ejected from town, however Beauchamp decides to stay and write about Little Bill, who has impressed him with his tales of old gunfights and seeming knowledge of the inner workings of a gunfighter's psyche.
Munny, Logan and the Kid arrive in Big Whiskey amid a rain storm and head to the whorehouse to find out where the cowboys are. Munny has a bad fever after riding in the rain, and is sitting alone in the saloon when Little Bill and his deputies arrive to confront him. Little Bill has no idea who Munny is. Little Bill informs Munny that firearms aren't allowed in Big Whiskey and asks him if he is carrying any and who he is, Munny gives him a false name and tells him he isn't carrying firearms. Bill searches Munny and discovers his gun, so he beats him up and kicks him into the street. Logan and the Kid, who are upstairs getting "advances" on their payment from the prostitutes, escape out a window when they realize the law is on to them.
The three regroup at a barn outside of town, where they nurse Munny back to health. Three days later, the men ambush a group of cowboys in the canyons and kill one of the targets — though it becomes apparent that Logan and Munny no longer have much stomach for murder. Logan decides he won't stick around to kill the second cowboy and sets off back home. Munny and the Kid head to the cowboys' ranch, where the Kid ambushes the second target in an outhouse and shoots him dead. After the two men escape from the ranch, the now distraught Kid confesses he had never killed anyone before.
When a prostitute meets the two men to give them their reward money, they learn that Logan was captured by Little Bill's men before he got out of the county. He was tortured to death, but not before giving up the identities of his two accomplices. When he learns of his friend's death, Munny takes a swig from the Kid's bottle of whiskey. An alcoholic in his past life, Munny had until this point refused all offers of drink. The Kid heads back to Kansas to deliver the reward money to Munny and Logan's families, while Munny heads into town to get revenge for Logan's death.
That night, Logan's corpse is displayed outside the whorehouse/saloon as a warning to all assassins. Inside, Little Bill has assembled a posse to pursue Munny and the Kid. Munny walks straight into the saloon with a double-barreled shotgun and then shoots Skinny Dubois the owner/pimp. Little Bill insults Munny calling him a "cowardly son of a bitch" and says "You'd be William Munny out of Missouri, killer of women and children". Munny aims the shotgun right at Little Bill and says "That's right, I've killed women and children, I've killed just about everything that walked or crawled at one time or another, and I'm here to kill you Little Bill, for what you did to Ned". Bill directs the room that after Munny has fired his final shot at Bill to "Pick up your pistols and shoot him down like the mangy scoundrel he is". After a tense moment, Munny pulls the trigger, but the shotgun misfires. Munny then hurls the shotgun at Little Bill who draws his gun, fires, and misses. A gunfight ensues, in which Munny shoots five men, including Little Bill, who is shot in the gut. When the shooting stops, Munny orders "Any man who don't wanna get shot, better clear on out the back", then starts drinking whiskey at the bar.
Mr. Beauchamp crawls out from behind a body and asks Munny details about the gunfight — who he shot first and why. Munny asks Beauchamp to hand him a Spencer rifle with shells. But when Beauchamp asks too many questions about the order of who he killed, Munny dismisses Beauchamp.
Little Bill, only wounded, tries to cock his gun, but is disarmed by Munny. Bill declares he doesn't deserve to die like this, and then Munny shoots him.
As he leaves the bar, Munny shouts out that they'd better bury Ned properly or he'd come back to kill every one of them. A deputy across the street is too frightened to take a shot at Munny as he rides away. The final scene is a silhouette of Munny's pig farm. Text scrolls by on the screen, telling us that Munny was later rumored to have moved to San Francisco and "prospered in dry goods".
[edit]Cast
- Clint Eastwood as William "Will" Munny
- Gene Hackman as Little Bill Daggett
- Morgan Freeman as Ned Logan
- Richard Harris as English Bob
- Jaimz Woolvett as The Schofield Kid
- Saul Rubinek as W. W. Beauchamp
- Frances Fisher as Strawberry Alice
- Anna Levine as Delilah Fitzgerald
- David Mucci as Quick Mike
- Rob Campbell as Davey Bunting
- Anthony James as Skinny Dubois
- Tara Frederick as Little Sue
- Beverley Elliott as Silky
- Liisa Repo-Martell as Faith
- Josie Smith as Crow Creek Kate
- Shane Meier as William Munny Jr.
[edit]Production
The film was written by David Webb Peoples, who had written the Oscar-nominated film The Day After Trinity and co-wrote Blade Runner.[1]The concept for the film dated as far back as 1976 under the titles The Cut-Whore Killings and The William Munny Killings.[1] Eastwood delayed the project, partly because he wanted to wait until he was old enough to play his character and to savor it as the last of his western films.[1] Much of the cinematography for the film was shot in Alberta in August 1991 by director of photography Jack Green.[2] Production designer Henry Bumstead, who had worked with Eastwood on High Plains Drifter, was hired to create the "drained, wintry look" of the western.[2]
[edit]Reception
Critical response was very positive, and the film is 'Certified Fresh' by Rotten Tomatoes, with a 96% approval rating among reviews. Many critics acclaimed the film for its noir-ish moral ambiguity and atmosphere. They also acclaimed it as a fitting eulogy to the western genre. Jack Methews of the Los Angeles Times described it as "The finest classical western to come along since perhaps John Ford's 1956 The Searchers.[3] Richard Corliss in Time wrote that the film was "Eastwood's meditation on age, repute, courage, heroism—on all those burdens he has been carrying with such grace for decades".[3]
However, the film was not without its critics: Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, though the latter still gave it a positive vote, both criticized the picture for being too long and having too many superfluous characters (such as Harris's English Bob, who enters and leaves without ever meeting the protagonists). Roger Ebert did, however, eventually include the film in his "Great Movies" list.[4]
[edit]Box office
The film debuted at the top position in its opening weekend.[5][6] Its earnings of over $13 million on its opening weekend was the best ever opening for an Eastwood film.[3] Unforgiven eventually earned $160 million in ticket sales in the United States alone.[7]
[edit]Awards and honors
[edit]Academy Awards
[edit]Others
In June 2008, Unforgiven was acknowledged as the fourth best American film in the western genre (behind Shane, High Noon, and The Searchers) in the American Film Institute's "AFI's 10 Top 10" list.[8][9]
The film makes an appearance in the American Film Institute's 100 years, 100 movies. In 2005, Time.com named it one of the 100 best movies of the last 80 years. It was also admitted to the National Film Registry in 2004, one of the few westerns to be so honored.
American Film Institute recognition
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies #98
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #68
- AFI's 10 Top 10 #4 Western
In 1992, the film poster designer, longtime Eastwood collaborator Bill Gold, won the prestigious Key Art award from The Hollywood Reporter
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