R | 2h 10m | Drama, Western | 1992
In actor, producer, and director Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Western drama “Unforgiven,” we see a similar narrative about a former outlaw who is far removed from his previous life and has traded in his six-shooters for a farmer’s plow. Mr. Eastwood’s character, Bill Munny, ekes out a humble living on a small farm in Kansas with his two young kids.
The film begins in a small town called Big Whiskey, Wyoming, where a couple of cowboys, Quick Mike (David Mucci) and Davey Bunting (Rob Campbell) make use of the local brothel. Delilah Fitzgerald (Anna Thomson) insults Quick Mike, and, as a consequence, he slashes her face with his blade.
Big Whiskey’s sheriff, Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), quickly arrives on the scene and aims to punish the two men by forcing them to offer their best ponies to the brothel’s owner and pimp, Skinny DuBois (Anthony James).
The prostitutes, led by Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher), aim to take their own retribution out on the two cowboys. They pool their money together and put the word out that anyone who takes out the cowboys will receive a $1,000 reward.
As word of the reward goes out, a young man called the “Schofield Kid” (Jaimz Woolvett) reckons he’ll collect it. Having heard from his “Uncle Pete” that Bill Munny was one of the baddest men he’d ever encountered back in the day, the Kid travels to Munny’s farm to try to partner up for the cowboy-killing mission. But, since Munny’s late wife inspired him to be a more peaceful man, he turns down the brash youngster’s offer.
However, Munny realizes the dire straits his farm is in, and changes his mind. In a humorous scene, Munny tries in vain to conjure the skills he had as a younger gunslinger, but fails miserably. As he tries his hand in target practice, the bullets whiz by the targets he fires at. He can barely even mount his trusty old horse without being thrown to the ground by the cantankerous animal.
Knowing he’ll need help, Munny visits his old partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), who has an equally shady past and, like Munny, has settled into a relatively humdrum life on a farm with his Native American wife, Sally Two Trees (Cherrilene Cardinal). Sally is to check on Munny’s kids while he’s gone. Logan reluctantly agrees to the mission, Sally stays with Munny’s children, and the two old pals catch up with the Kid who is on his way to Big Whiskey. They agree to split the reward three ways.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Daggett’s deputies are having to deal with the first scurrilous character arriving in town to collect the reward, an arrogant Englishman (Richard Harris) fittingly named “English Bob.” Before he settled into his life as a lawman, Daggett was himself a gunslinger, and Bob was one of his rivals. Thus, things are about to heat up in the relatively quiet town of Big Whiskey.
This is a curiously complex Western with many multifaceted, contradictory characters. For instance, while Munny exclaims to others that he is no longer the ruthless gunslinger he used to be, he is out to kill a pair of cowboys for payment. And, while Daggett wears the badge of a lawman and seems to want to defend his town against all manner of dastardly people, his methods are quite brutal, often needlessly.
The film also examines much of the mythological tales of the Old West and suggests that many of them could be “augmented” here and there. This is evident in the nerdy W.W. Beauchamp character (played with aplomb by Saul Rubinek), who travels with Bob while writing about the Englishman’s life. After listening to Daggett’s more earnest accounts of his and Bob’s shared history and witnessing the sheriff’s realistic reactions to perceived threats, Beauchamp realizes that Bob’s stories about himself are most likely tall tales.
As a film, “Unforgiven” harkens back to Italian-made Westerns, or so-called “Spaghetti Westerns,” which were grittier and more realistic than many of the genre movies that came before it. Instead of square-jawed super-cowboys with perfect aims and unwavering heroics, the characters depicted here are mainly flawed folks trying to deal with real-life issues in imperfect ways.
It’s a fitting way for Western icon Clint Eastwood to bid farewell to the genre he dedicated much of his life to.
