Unforgiven (1992) IMDB Rating: 8.3/10
Storyline: The town of Big Whisky is full of normal people trying to lead quiet lives. Cowboys try to make a living. Sheriff ‘Little Bill’ tries to build a house and keep a heavy-handed order. The town whores just try to get by. Then a couple of cowboys cut up a whore. Dissatisfied with Bill’s justice, the prostitutes put a bounty on the cowboys. The bounty attracts a young gun billing himself as ‘The Schofield Kid’, and aging killer William Munny. Munny reformed for his young wife and has been raising crops and two children in peace. But his wife is gone. Farm life is hard. And Munny is no good at it. So he calls his old partner Ned, saddles his ornery nag, and rides off to kill one more time, blurring the lines between heroism and villainy, man and myth.
User Review: There may never be another real western. Clint appears to be done with the genre, and there really isn’t anyone else I can think of that can do it Properly. Sergio Leone is gone. William Wellman is gone. Sam Peckinpah is gone. John Huston is gone. John Ford is gone. Howard Hawks is gone. Kevin Costner tries hard, but he just doesn’t get it. Dances With Wolves wasn’t really a western. It wasn’t even anti-Western. It was more like a political indictment of the actions of the Americans at the time.
For all that, I did enjoy it. Most of the others since Unforgiven are movies where somebody decides to put the characters on a horse, but the story is just generic pap. Nobody has the balls to make something with meaning. I will grant that Deadwood is a truly excellent series, but it isn’t a movie. That’s why I believe that Unforgiven is a fitting end to the western genre.
I won’t get all rhapsodic and spout a bunch of crap about how Clint made this movie as a symbol of the end of the western. That’s a load of crap. The script had been around since the early 1970s, when things were still going strong. What it is is a movie that shows us that there is no black and white at any time. There are only shades of gray. It is also just as dirty and violent as things actually were for most people in that era. Life was comparatively cheap, and most people didn’t have much hope of justice.
The middle class was very small, and the upper class was tiny. The vast majority belonged to the underclass. Good guys didn’t wear white hats, and not every sheriff was a good guy. Some were violent and corrupt braggarts and bullies. Little Bill mocks English Bob’s self-promotion, but at the same time he knocks Bob down, he builds himself up.
He doesn’t bother with courts or judges, and he is his own executioner. He isn’t motivated by any innate sense of justice when he deals with criminal elements. It’s more that he takes it as an insult to his own power. William Munny is a killer, plain and simple. He has human feelings, but he is basically unrepentant. He changed for his wife, but like many changes, it wasn’t permanent.
He won’t sleep with a whore, but when he needs money, he is willing to kill for it. At the same time, he treats the whore with kindness and is loyal to his friend. And somehow he managed to get a good woman to love him. A classic anti-hero. Rather than being about the end of the Western genre, I believe that it is actually an ode to what came before it. Sergio Leone would have been proud.
