Unforgiven (1992)

September 13, 2022 10:13 AM

William Munny (Clint Eastwood) is a retired, once-ruthless killer turned gentle widower and hog farmer. To help support his two motherless children, he accepts one last bounty-hunter mission to find the men who brutalized a prostitute (Anna Thomson). Joined by his former partner (Morgan Freeman) and a cocky greenhorn (Jaimz Woolvett), he takes on corrupt sheriff Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman).

Also starring Frances Fisher, Richard Harris, and Sauk Rubinek. Written by David Webb Peoples (Blade Runner). Directed by Clint Eastwood.

96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Currently streaming in the US on Tubi. Also available for digital rental on multiple outlets. JustWatch listing.

posted by DirtyOldTown (23 comments total)

This is a fantastic film. Easily the best thing Eastwood ever did, IMO. If you've resisted seeing it because Eastwood is... well, Eastwood, don't skip it. It's a sharp-edged consideration of the reality of violence.

I thought it would also be interesting to discuss this on the heels of discussing Shane, since they share certain similarities.

In Shane the ex-gunslinger says he wants to leave his life of violence, but is actually regularly drawing attention to himself and inserting himself into situations that seem to call out for him to pick up a gun again. In Unforgiven, the ex-gunslinger seems to be truly sincere about having given up that life, but gets dragged back into that life out of financial pressure. He fears will happen to him if he resumes killing, but his wife is dead. his farm is failing, and his kids need the money.

Also, if in Shane, we watch violence from the outside, from the POV of the Starretts and the town, in Unforgiven, we're right in the thick of it with Will Munny. We see its pull take him and turn him and corrupt him, until in the end, he's a far more terrifying monster than anything else in the movie.

This movie also finds multiple threads along the way to pull at as it dissects violence as heroism: Daggett, who represents violence as authority, he's simply the baddest man in town so he gets the star; English Bob, who approaches violence as a sort of glamorous pursuit for the finest men; and The Schofield Kid, who think it will make him tough.

The ending, where Munny gives in to his worst self and shows the town what violence really looks like, is stunning.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:25 AM on September 13, 2022 [9 favorites]

I put that last bit together a little sloppily. I meant to say: Daggett is violence as authority; English Bob is violence as fame/virility/aristocracy/being the big name; Schofield Kid is violence as toughness/manliness. And each of those has it entirely wrong. Violence is evil, is cancerous, is toxic. Munny knows this. That's why he wanted to stay out.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:36 AM on September 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

Bill Daggett:
I don't deserve this... to die like this. I was building a house.

Bill Munny:
Deserve's got nothin' to do with it.

Bill Daggett:
I'll see you in hell, William Munny.

Bill Munny:
Yeah.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:36 AM on September 13, 2022 [9 favorites]

This is a brilliant film, DOT has it exactly right about the different facets of violence and the Kid learns it the relatively easy way.
posted by porpoise at 11:37 AM on September 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is such a great film, and has so many fantastic lines.

"I thought you were dead."

"Hell, I thought I was dead too! Turned out I was just in Nebraska."
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:45 PM on September 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

The Kid: It don't seem real... how he ain't gonna never breathe again, ever... how he's dead. And the other one too. All on account of pulling a trigger.

Munny: It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.

The Kid: Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.

Munny: We all got it coming, kid.


I love this film. Eastwood's performance here is top notch, and Freeman and Hackman are also great. It's a commentary on not only violence, but on fragile masculinity - I mean, the incident that sets all of this off is a woman laughing at a man's penis, and the vengeance that comes after. I really think you can divide Westerns into those that came before Unforgiven and those that came after - the ones that came after aren't as white hat/black hat as those that came before.

When Stephen King's The Gunslinger first came out in 1982, I think most of the readers envisioned Eastwood in the title role. I know I did. This film came out ten years later, but the only mental picture I have anymore for that is Eastwood as Munny in that role - a world weary, hellbent on vengeance, unbelievably good killer. "His fingers did their reloading trick".
posted by nubs at 3:33 PM on September 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

This film is not exactly subtle about anything but it's so good. I like how it also pooh-pooh's the idea of displays of skill; English Bob can shoot birds, The Kid has a fast draw. This isn't a Zatoichi where the good guy is going to win through prowess. There's not really anything Munny does that shows a ton of skill. In fact he's pathetic a lot of the time and even in the end when he's "winning" he's not like busting out wild action moves. All that's different is the actual will to kill, and a lot of people don't have it, and shouldn't want it. It's pretty good for a moralizing western.
posted by fleacircus at 4:18 PM on September 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

Munny even has that dialogue with the pulp writer at the end, where the guy (played by Saul Rubinek) asks how he decided which order to shoot to he men in, whether his strategy was about disabling the best guns first, etc. Munny responds flatly that he had no such forethought, "I was lucky in the order. But then I've always been lucky when it comes to killing people."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:21 PM on September 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

Two things stand out to me in Eastwood's masterpiece.
1) The English Bob sub-plot and how it ties into the William Munny mystique. Bob talks about how an assassin is unable to shoot the Queen because she is majestic. And then at the end of the movie, no one is willing to take the shot at Munny.
2) Has there ever been a more intimate gunfight in a Western than Munny's showdown with Little Bill and Co in Greely's? The saloon, in the low-light, with an entranced audience. Even the youngest two prostitutes stay to watch what will probably be the most notable event in their lives.
posted by Stuka at 4:44 PM on September 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

I always feel like Eastwood's films are only as good as the script and this is easily one of the best ones he ever shot.
posted by octothorpe at 5:30 PM on September 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

For me, Eastwood's films rely not just on the script but on the mythology. There are films where he has a real grasp on an idea, how the world and media sees it, and what the actual truth beneath might be. There are others where his politics leads him to sign off on some bullshit, frankly.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:46 PM on September 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Strawberry Alice : You just kicked the shit out of an innocent man!

Little Bill Daggett : Innocent? Innocent of what?

*chef’s kiss*
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:55 PM on September 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

A phenomenal film. And the exchange that nubs posted is a movie quote for the ages.

I always thought it funny that Hackman did this role and then, three years later, did a funhouse mirror version of it in "The Quick and the Dead".
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:00 PM on September 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

1) The English Bob sub-plot and how it ties into the William Munny mystique. Bob talks about how an assassin is unable to shoot the Queen because she is majestic. And then at the end of the movie, no one is willing to take the shot at Munny.

It's less majestic than that they're terrified of him. Two men outside the saloon with rifles could have Munny dead to rights, and neither is willing to shoot out of fear of what would happen if they miss. (Which, to be fair, Munny shouts an explicit threat to anyone waiting outside -- he'll kill anyone he sees, and worse for anyone who shoots at him. They believe it.)
posted by Gelatin at 6:01 AM on September 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

It's also funny how Munny isn't doing well at all. His life sucks, his farm sucks, he's not really providing for his kids. He is crawling on his belly. Without killin' he's not actually anything. The path of righteousness has not actually led anywhere for him. He's beyond redemption. Delicious bonus bleakness.

This is also my second favorite Hackman performance I think. Little Bill is smiling and charming. He's building a house, things are going well for him. He's a normal psychopath. He's fatherly in a way Munny isn't. One of the well-deserved Oscars.
posted by fleacircus at 6:49 AM on September 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's less majestic than that they're terrified of him.

Perhaps in a lesser movie, that would be the intended interpretation. But look Eastwood's composition there are the end. William Munny on horseback, the camera looking up at him, the American flag hanging behind him, as he lays down the law to the people of Big Whiskey and the consequences if they don't obey. William Munny is certainly not royalty. He may not be majestic. But he is still awesome to behold!

Also, why include English Bob ruminating on how it's impossible to shoot the Queen (but not a president!) if it doesn't tie in somehow? Chekhov's gun, no?
posted by Stuka at 9:12 AM on September 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

I know it's been said, and said, and said, but this movie rules so fucking much.

Best Western I've ever seen, and one of the best movies I've ever seen.
posted by kbanas at 11:54 AM on September 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

“Little Bill is smiling and charming. He's building a house, things are going well for him. He's a normal psychopath. He's fatherly in a way Munny isn't.”

He's building a crooked house.

I've always believed that Munny isn't good or evil himself, but the manifestation of the simple fact of violent conflict in a world where good and evil exist. (See "money".)

But Little Bill — Little Bill is genuinely evil precisely because he indulges in his lust for violence under the guise of being a "good man". And he really and truly believes himself to be righteous. He's utterly self-deluded about his motivations and what justice actually is, and he dies believing he's been wronged. His crooked house is a synecdoche of everything Little Bill has made in his world.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:34 PM on September 14, 2022 [7 favorites]

More than crooked, Bill's roof leaks despite him working on it throughout the film. His justifications aren't any protection.
posted by nubs at 1:31 PM on September 14, 2022 [5 favorites]

One of my absolute favorites. Funny to think that Eastwood held onto the script (supposedly) until he was old enough to play it - enough distance from all that Western heroes/outlaws to be baked and grizzled and worn down. And now here we are, 30 years on and it's still perfect
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:36 PM on September 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Four Oscars was probably enough (though it was an excellent film as well as a bold revisiting of what was, when this appeared in the early 90s, a pretty much dead genre) but Eastwood or any of the other nominees that year deserved the Best Actor award more than Pacino did (for his performance as Foghorn Leghorn in Scent of a Woman). Pacino's a hell of an actor, don't get me wrong. I just wish the academy had honored him for one of the roles in which he was good.
posted by Nerd of the North at 11:49 PM on September 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

"Scent of a Woman" is such an offensively objectifying title. Right up there with the racism of "White Hunter, Black Heart." These movies would come out and I would think, "What the fuck?"

I have not seen Unforgiven but after this discussion I will, and am looking forward to it.
posted by Well I never at 4:18 PM on September 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

There are others where his politics leads him to sign off on some bullshit, frankly.

Talk to the chair.
posted by y2karl at 1:57 PM on September 23, 2022 [1 favorite]