Movie Review: Unforgiven

In Clint Eastwood’s western film, Unforgiven, evil is explored from a more classical perspective, as glimpsed through the lenses of the American “Wild West.” Nevertheless, Clint Eastwood’s world of fallen cowboys and cripplingly evil rogues is a kind of homage to a more antiquated setting in which all seem to recognize that for every bit of good done, some bad must also be brought to bear.

In Big Whiskey, Wyoming, saloon-loitering and prostitution is big business, but when local gunslingers disfigure a local working girl for no particular reason, her colleagues in arms seek vengeance on her behalf, offering a $1,000 reward for anybody who takes the lives of those men who disfigured their fellow. Concerned by this financial incentive, Big Whiskey’s gatekeeper, Gene Hackman’s Sherriff Bill Dagget, outlaws firearms in the town. Little does he know that Willam Munny, Clint Eastwood’s once-bad pig farmer, is moving in for a kind of redemptive kill. It is clear that Munny was once a less scrupulous man than he is when we encounter him, but it is his little bit of bad that is necessary to ensure the good of justice.

As the film progresses, we are seized with an increasingly distinct sense of Munny’s previously immoral character, but are nevertheless conscious of his changed ways, believing that he will somehow avenge the loss of his own innocence. In this sense, Munny’s heart is as brutally disfigured as the face of the suffering prostitute on whose behalf he seeks justice. Munny is not out for blood money, but rather out for justice that will require the letting of blood if only to ensure that none is ever spilled again by those without a warrant.

Work Cited

Unforgiven. Dir. Clint Eastwood. Perf. Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman. Warner Bros., 1992. Film.