Unforgiven is a 1992 American Western film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood with a screenplay written by David Webb Peoples. The film portrays William Munny, an aging outlaw and killer who takes on one more job years after he had turned to farming. A dark Western that deals frankly with the uglier aspects of violence and how complicated truths are distorted into simplistic myths about the Old West, it stars Eastwood in the lead role, with Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris. Eastwood stated that the film would be his last Western for fear of repeating himself or imitating someone else's work.
Eastwood dedicated the movie to deceased directors and mentors Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. The film won four Academy Awards: Best Picture and Best Director for Clint Eastwood, Best Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman and Best Film Editing for editor Joel Cox. Eastwood was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, but he lost to Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman. In 2004, Unforgiven was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The film was the third Western to win the Oscar for Best Picture, following Cimarron (1931) and Dances With Wolves (1990).
Plot
The film is set in 1881 in Big Whiskey, Wyoming, where Little Bill Daggett, the local sheriff and former gunfighter, does not allow guns or criminals in his town. Two cowboys, Quick Mike and "Davey-Boy" Bunting, disfigure prostitute Delilah Fitzgerald after she laughs at the small size of Quick Mike's penis. Instead of punishing the cowboys, Little Bill allows them to pay compensation to the brothel owner, Skinny Dubois. The rest of the prostitutes, led by Strawberry Alice, are infuriated by this leniency and offer a $1,000 reward to whoever can kill the cowboys.
Miles away in Kansas, the Schofield Kid, a boastful young man, visits the pig farm of William Munny, seeking to recruit him to help kill the cowboys. In his youth, Munny was a bandit notorious as a cold-blooded murderer. Now a repentant widower raising two children, he has sworn off alcohol and killing. Though Munny initially refuses to help, his farm is failing, putting his children's future in jeopardy. Munny reconsiders a few days later and sets off to catch up with the Kid. On his way, Munny recruits Ned Logan, another retired gunfighter.
Back in Wyoming, gunfighter English Bob, an old acquaintance and rival of Little Bill, is also seeking the reward and arrives in Big Whiskey with a biographer, W. W. Beauchamp. Little Bill and his deputies disarm Bob, and Bill beats him savagely, hoping to discourage other would-be assassins. That night in the town jail, Little Bill begins to dissect the boastful stories that Bob has been telling Beauchamp, revealing him to be rather less than the heroic figure he has made himself out to be. The next morning he ejects Bob from town. Beauchamp decides to stay and write about Bill who has impressed him with his tales of old gunfights and seeming knowledge of the inner workings of a gunfighter's psyche.
Munny, Logan and the Kid arrive later during a rain storm; they go to the saloon/whorehouse to discover the cowboys' location. With a bad fever after riding in the rain, Munny is sitting alone in the saloon when Little Bill and his deputies arrive to confront him. With no idea of Munny's past, Little Bill beats him and kicks him out of the saloon after finding a pistol on him. Logan and the Kid, upstairs getting advances in kind on their payment from the prostitutes, escape out a back window. The three regroup at a barn outside of town, where they nurse Munny back to health.
Three days later, they ambush a group of cowboys and kill Bunting. Logan and Munny no longer have much stomach for murder. Logan decides to return home while Munny feels they must finish what they started. Munny and the Kid head to the cowboys' ranch, where the Kid ambushes Quick Mike in an outhouse and kills him. After they escape, a distraught Kid confesses he had never killed anyone before. Munny advises him to drink more whiskey to numb the pain. The Kid renounces life as a gunfighter and plans to return home.
When Little Sue meets the two men to give them the prostitute's reward, they learn that Logan was captured by Little Bill's men and tortured to death. He had revealed the names of his two accomplices before dying, after which his corpse was displayed outside the saloon. The Kid heads back to Kansas to deliver the reward money to Munny's children and Logan's wife. Munny returns to town to take revenge on Little Bill.
That night, Munny arrives and sees that Logan's corpse is indeed displayed in a coffin outside the saloon. Inside, Little Bill has assembled a posse to pursue Munny and the Kid. Munny walks in alone and kills the saloon owner, Skinny Dubois. After some tense dialogue, a gunfight ensues, leaving Bill wounded and several of his deputies dead. Just as Bill weakly lifts his pistol and cocks it, Munny turns and kicks it from his hand, killing him with a final "coup de grâce" gunshot. Munny threatens the townsfolk before finally leaving Big Whiskey, warning that he will return to exact more vengeance if Logan is not buried properly or if any of the prostitutes are harmed.
Cast
- Clint Eastwood as William "Will" Munny
- Gene Hackman as "Little" Bill Daggett
- Morgan Freeman as Ned Logan
- Richard Harris as English Bob
- Jaimz Woolvett as the Schofield Kid
- Saul Rubinek as W. W. Beauchamp
- Frances Fisher as Strawberry Alice
- Anna Levine as Delilah Fitzgerald
- Rob Campbell as Davey Bunting
- Anthony James as Skinny Dubois
- Liisa Repo-Martell as Faith
- Shane Meier as William Munny Jr.
- David Mucci as Quick Mike
- Tara Frederick as Little Sue
- Beverley Elliott as Silky
- Josie Smith as Crow Creek Kate
Production
The film was written by David Webb Peoples, who had written the Oscar-nominated film The Day After Trinity and co-wrote Blade Runner. The concept for the film dated to 1976, when it was developed under the titles The Cut-Whore Killings and The William Munny Killings. Eastwood delayed the project, partly because he wanted to wait until he was old enough to play the lead and to savor it as the last of his western films.
Much of the cinematography for the film was shot in Alberta in August 1991 by director of photography Jack Green. Filming took place between August 26, 1991 and November 12, 1991. Production designer Henry Bumstead, who had worked with Eastwood on High Plains Drifter, was hired to create the "drained, wintry look" of the western.
Reception
Unforgiven received near-universal acclaim. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes registers a "Certified Fresh" 95% approval rating among reviews. Many critics acclaimed the film for its noir-ish moral ambiguity and atmosphere. They also acclaimed it as a fitting eulogy to the western genre. Jack Methews of the Los Angeles Times described it as "The finest classical western to come along since perhaps John Ford's 1956 The Searchers." Richard Corliss in Time wrote that the film was "Eastwood's meditation on age, repute, courage, heroism â€" on all those burdens he has been carrying with such grace for decades."
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert criticized the work, though the latter gave it a positive vote, for being too long and having too many superfluous characters (such as Harris' English Bob, who enters and leaves without meeting the protagonists). Despite his reservations, Ebert eventually included the film in his "Great Movies" list.
Home media
Unforgiven was released on Blu-ray Book (a Blu-ray Disc with book packaging) on February 21, 2012. Special features include an audio commentary by the Clint Eastwood biographer, Richard Schickel; four documentaries including "All on Accounta Pullin' a Trigger", "Eastwood & Co.: Making Unforgiven", "Eastwood...A Star", and "Eastwood on Eastwood", and more.
Box office
The film debuted at the top position in its opening weekend. Its earnings of $15,018,007 ($7,252 average from 2,071 theaters) on its opening weekend was the best ever opening for an Eastwood film at that time. It spent a total of 3 weeks as the No. 1 movie in North America. In its 35th weekend (April 2â€"4, 1993), capitalizing on its Oscar wins, the film returned to the Top 10 (spending another 3 weeks total), ranking at No. 8 with a gross of $2,538,358 ($2,969 average from 855 theaters), an improvement of 197 percent over the weekend before where it made $855,188 ($1,767 average from 484 theaters). The film closed on July 15, 1993, having spent nearly a full year in theaters (343 days / 49 weeks), having earned $101,157,447 in North America, and another $58,000,000 overseas for a total of $159,157,447 worldwide.
Accolades
Others
In June 2008, Unforgiven was listed as the fourth best American film in the western genre (behind The Searchers, High Noon, and Shane) in the American Film Institute's "AFI's 10 Top 10" list.
The film is listed in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies. In 2005, Time named it one of the 100 best movies of the last 80 years. It was also admitted to the National Film Registry in 2004.
The music for the Unforgiven film trailer, which appeared in theatres and on some of the DVDs, was composed by Randy J. Shams and Tim Stithem in 1992.
- American Film Institute recognition
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies â€" #98
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills â€" Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
- Sheriff “Little Bill†Daggett â€" Nominated Villain
- William Munny â€" Nominated Hero
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
- "It's a hell of a thing killin' a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." â€" Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) â€" #68
- AFI's 10 Top 10 â€" #4 Western Film
In 1992, the film poster designer, longtime Eastwood collaborator Bill Gold, won the prestigious Key Art award from The Hollywood Reporter.
Remake
A Japanese remake directed by Lee Sang-il and starring Ken Watanabe was released in 2013. The plot is very similar to the original, but takes place during the Meiji period in Japan with Watanabe's character being a samurai of old regime instead of a bandit.
References
Bibliography
- Hughes, Howard (2009). Aim for the Heart. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBNÂ 978-1-84511-902-7.Â
- McGilligan, Patrick (1999). Clint: The Life and Legend. London: Harper Collins. ISBNÂ 0-00-638354-8.Â
External links
- Unforgiven at the Internet Movie Database
- Unforgiven at AllMovie
- Unforgiven at Rotten Tomatoes
- Unforgiven at Box Office Mojo
- Unforgiven at Filmsite.org
- Unforgiven at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films list
- Psychoanalytic review of Unforgiven
- Essay on the film