07/19/10 - Unforgiven

Unforgiven (1992, 131 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105695/

After seeing The Searchers and Shane last month it made me want to see Unforgiven. Unforgiven is one of the most heralded newer westerns coming out pretty recently in only 1992. I'd also read that it was not the typical western and was much less praising of the wild west than the standard film in the genre.

The film follows William "Bill" Munny (Clint Eastwood) as he rides out to collect a bounty placed on two men. Going along with him is his trusted friend Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) and the kid who informed him of the bounty nicknamed The Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett). It turns out the town he's going to is run by the sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman) who throws out anybody arriving to collect the bounty. Playing other bigger roles are: Richard Harris as English Bob, Saul Rubinek as W.W. Beauchamp, and Frances Fischer as Strawberry Alice.

First, the real reason I love the western genre is because it boils down to good versus evil. That's what I liked so much about Shane. Perhaps surprisingly though, my favorite western - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - really doesn't follow that formula. But it does so much else perfectly that all is forgiven. Ironically, that does not hold true for Unforgiven. Here, Munny is portrayed as about the most violent man ever, even killing women and children with reckless abandon while he was drunk. But now he's so old and worn down from working honestly that he becomes the hero. The bounty is also because the men cut up a prostitute's face and weren't really charged for it and Munny rides out because he is sympathetic to the women. So the film does a good job at making him off to be a good guy. Where the movie falters though is in its bad guy. I guess the main bad guy here is supposed to be Little Bill but he comes off as too human to be a good antagonist. Part of the allure to the western genre to me is that the bad characters are bad and the good characters (though sometimes prone to killing) have good hearts. Little Bill doesn't want people carrying guns in his town because it'll lead to violence and so he brutally beats up English Bob when he arrives in town with a gun and refuses to turn it over. At this moment the film turns Little Bill into the antagonist but I'm just not convinced. Everything he had done until this point is because he wants order in his town and not people running about collecting bounties. It sort of makes sense in a way and because of this I find it hard to hate on him. As the movie goes along, Little Bill turns more violent towards the heroes but it's still all with this goal in mind. He's not evil for the sake of being evil like the good western villains. Another aspect that makes me not want to hate on Little Bill is how he describes English Bob. Basically he puts the guy in his place and makes us realize we shouldn't be liking English Bob. So Little Bill just beat up English Bob but I'm not supposed to like him? This whole aspect of Unforgiven boils down to having three main groups of people: the prostitutes who have placed the bounty, Munny and his group who are going to collect it, and the sheriff Little Bill. There's just an awkward balance among the three that creates a poor vibe to the film.

Another main character that I just don't like is The Schofield Kid. First, Woolvett has no screen power, especially when he's up on screen with Eastwood. Eastwood commands the screen and camera like nobody else in a western and Freeman is a good enough actor that he's fine in this department. But Woolvett is just out of place. He's really not all that likable either and is just flawed in the wrong way (poor eyesight) to make me care much about him. There's a little story arc about him acting tougher than he is and laying claim to some killings that's revealed to be false but even this doesn't save me from disliking the guy.

The aspect of Unforgiven that I think it most noticed is how it characterizes the west as not good. There's tons of violence and it's harsh. Obviously, this is how the west was - it wasn't the lighthearted happiness as was more frequently depicted in older films. I mean, sure, they sometimes showed the west was harsh but still not in as real enough a way as Unforgiven did. This part is handled really well.

Every great western needs to have a shootout and Unforgiven builds towards its shootout for the very end. It's basically Munny versus Little Bill and a bunch of other guys and Munny is able to swiftly dispose of enough people to make the survivors run away. It has a magical quality about it that directly clashes with the harshness of the film up until this point but it still ends up working. One reason for this is because of the foreshadowing done by Little Bill as he talks to Beauchamp about English Bob which all began to click and come together in my mind right before the shootout started. So, even though (as is true of most shootouts) we know who will live, it's still exciting to see how everything ties together and how exactly the shootout unfolds. It's not the greatest gunfight but it's not bad either.

Overall, I gave this film a 7/10. Unforgiven isn't a great western because it blurs the line between western and drama too much for my taste. It succeeds at a lot of the elements of making a good story but I just don't think it turns out to be amazing in the western setting. Still, excellent acting from the leads and the well done harsh realism of the west give this movie a 7/10 rating.