Unforgiven

Bill Munny (a name to conjure with) is face down in pig shit when we first see him. He’s a bad farmer, but has a natural facility for killing people — a vocation to which he returns in a quest that combines both profit and justice. Or so he chooses to believe.

Working from an exemplary screenplay by David Webb Peoples (who also wrote Blade Runner and Twelve Monkeys), Clint Eastwood fashioned one of the indelible revisionist Westerns, a much more realistic and sour take on the familiar cowboy-avenger theme. Handsomely shot and superbly cast (Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris in support of Eastwood himself), the film presents an American frontier irreparably scarred by violence. It’s a sorry tale, in which one injustice spirals into many; mercenary values and multiple misunderstandings culminate in a mythic shoot out underpinned with a tragic sense of loss and regret.

This dark, melancholic film is a reminder of what the American cinema is capable of, in the way of expressing a mature, morally complex and challenging view of the world.

Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune

A stunning, dark Western that may stand as the actor/director’s summation of the form.

David Ansen, Newsweek

A classic Western for the ages.

Todd McCarthy, Variety

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