This was the best Western I've ever seen, but I have to admit it's only the third I've ever watched. Maybe if they were all this great, I could say that I liked Westerns.
So in the town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming, a prostitute laughs at a cowboy for being poorly endowed, and he responds by slashing up her face. The sheriff deems the appropriate punishment to be paying five horses to the owner of the whorehouse. Obviously, the women of the house are not so happy with this arrangement, and they pool their money to create a reward for whoever can kill the guy responsible for ruining the prostitute's face (and career.) Clint Eastwood hears about the reward and comes out of his assassin retirement to make some money for his family. He calls on his good friend Morgan Freeman, and they team up with the very obnoxious "Schofield Kid" to kill the cowboy and his friend.
The main theme of this movie has popped up in several of the movies I've seen so far, and that's the idea of what is good, what is evil, and what does it mean when the two are blurred. There are no "good guys" in this movie... Everyone is either perceived as moral (the sheriff) with a healthy dose of evilness or immoral (the assassins) with a strong grasp on right and wrong.
Rating: 7.5/10
Big Names: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman (2nd appearance after French Connection), Morgan Freeman (also in Shawshank), Frances Fisher (not a big name, but this is her second time to appear in a top 100 movie, too... she was also Rose's mom in Titanic)
I loved this movie! I can't believe you only gave it 7.5 out of 10. =o)
ReplyDeleteThere are actually a number of good Westerns on the AFI list (and this is coming from someone who's not necessarily big on Westerns), but "Unforgiven" was definitely my favorite.
Well, I think it's hard for me to say it's *that* good without having more Westerns to compare it to. I may end up changing that later. :)
ReplyDeleteI guess it might depend on which western you watch first. The first one I saw was "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid", and I really didn't like that one at all. Perhaps that gave me low expectations for Westerns moving forward, so when I saw this one I was blown away at how it good it was.
ReplyDeleteOr, more likely, you and I just have very different tastes, because I also really like "The Wild Bunch". =o)