Unforgiven (1992)

31 October 2020

This one's been on my queue for a while now: I'm a huge fan of westerns and like to see the good ones when I can. This one is directed by and stars Clint Eastwood in his last western; it also has Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, and Richard Harris.

Sometimes referred to as a meta-narrative, this story dissects and contradicts the idolizing of common properties of western films: violence, objectification, and lawlessness. In this story you can't really call anyone in this film a hero. Characters are driven by money, fame or blind justice.

Hackman was a lawman that judged the disfiguring of a prostitute as property damage to the town barkeep, and drove this tale forward as the prostitutes pooled their money together for revenge, luring vigilantes into town. Eastwood's character was a legend he himself didn't recognize: his fights were during drunken stupors that led him to forget. But for money, he joins his partner and a young gun to try and collect.

I appreciate how the film makes no effort to romanticize the frontier life. And while I find the script flawless and the acting solid, it's wild that you also can sense Eastwood the director as a separate character - the bitter lens of the western landscape, capturing the uncomfortable moments of shoot-outs, or some of the issues from that time that seem trivial or insignificant today. There's a lot of depth to this film that seeps through as you watch. 10/10