Movie Review: The Outlaw Josey Wales

In his initial days as a filmmaker, Clint Eastwood hit upon a gem in The Outlaw Josey Wales. The symmetry of the film lies in the fact that Wales is the definitive outlaw, but nevertheless committed to restoring law and order as he sees fit, refusing to surrender his own honor, in addition to that of his family and companions.

As the film opens and we are introduced to Eastwood’s complex world of cowboys, Wales is offered the opportunity to surrender, with his fellows believing that he and they have been granted amnesty. Presented with this opportunity, Wales declines and is thus spared, as his fellows are slaughtered. In this paradoxical turn of events, Josey is thrust into yet another world in which he is an outsider, with a bounty on his head, though with his honor firmly intact.

As the film progresses, Josey is joined by a seemingly diverse plethora of companions, all of whom seem to gravitate towards his sense of justice, though he speaks little. It is as though Eastwood is introducing a new kind of cowboy to American culture; one who does not stand on ceremony only to make a point, unless that point is one necessary to be made to his enemy. Gone from Josey Wales is any semblance of the cock-eyed and cocky cowboy, and so too is the saloon as the field upon which honor rises or falls. In The Outlaw Josey Wales, actions not only speak louder than words but speak loudest of all because words do nothing to make a man.

The Outlaw Josey Wales presents a kind of paradoxical Western film in which the true man of honor is a cowboy of the doing kind, as opposed to one who merely shows up at “high noon.”

Work Cited

The Outlaw Josey Wales. Dir. Clint Eastwood. Perf. Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke (Warner Bros., 1976). Film.