Unforgiven


Unforgiven is a 1992 American revisionist Western film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and 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. The film 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.
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. The film was the third Western to win the Oscar for Best Picture, following Cimarron and Dances with Wolves.
Eastwood dedicated the film to directors and mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. In 2004, Unforgiven was added to the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot

In 1881 in Big Whiskey, Wyoming, two cowboys—Quick Mike and "Davey-Boy" Bunting—attack and disfigure prostitute Delilah Fitzgerald with a knife after she laughs at Quick Mike's small penis. As punishment, local sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett orders the cowboys to bring several horses as compensation for the brothel owner, Skinny Dubois. The rest of the prostitutes are outraged by the sheriff's decision, and offer a $1,000 reward to anyone who kills the cowboys.
In Hodgeman County, Kansas, a boastful young man calling himself the "Schofield Kid" visits the pig farm of William Munny, seeking to recruit him to help kill the cowboys and claim the reward. In his youth, Munny was a notorious outlaw and murderer, but he is now a repentant widower raising two children. After initially refusing to help, Munny recognizes that his farm is failing and jeopardizing his children's future, so he reconsiders. Munny recruits his friend Ned Logan, another retired outlaw, and they catch up with the Kid.
Back in Wyoming, British-born gunfighter "English Bob", an old acquaintance and rival of Little Bill, is also seeking the reward. He arrives in Big Whiskey with biographer W. W. Beauchamp, who naively believes Bob's exaggerated tales of his exploits. Enforcing the town's anti-gun law, Little Bill and his deputies disarm Bob and Bill beats him savagely, hoping to discourage other would-be assassins from attempting to claim the bounty. Bill ejects Bob from town the next morning, but Beauchamp decides to stay and write about Bill, who debunks many of the romantic notions Beauchamp has about the wild west.
Munny, Logan, and the Kid arrive in town during a rainstorm, and head into the saloon. While Logan and the Kid meet with the prostitutes upstairs, a feverish Munny is sitting alone in the saloon when Little Bill and his deputies confront him. Not realizing Munny's identity, Bill beats him up and kicks him out of the saloon for carrying a pistol. Logan and the Kid escape through a back window, and the three regroup at a barn outside town, where they nurse Munny back to health.
A few days later, the trio ambush and kill Bunting in front of his friends. Logan, who wounded Bunting but lost his nerve while attempting to finish him off, resolves to return home; Munny feels they must finish the job and does so using Logan's rifle. Munny and the Kid then head towards 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 and renounces life as a gunfighter. When one of the prostitutes arrives to give them the reward, they learn that Logan had been captured and tortured to death by Bill, but not before revealing Munny's identity. The Kid gives Will his revolver and heads back to Kansas with the reward; Munny heads back to Big Whiskey to take revenge on Little Bill.
That night, Munny arrives and sees Logan's corpse displayed in a coffin outside the saloon with a sign warning this is what happens to assassins in the town of Big Whiskey. Inside, Little Bill has assembled a posse to pursue Munny and the Kid. Munny walks in alone to confront the posse and kills Dubois. In the ensuing shootout, Munny shoots Bill and kills several of his deputies before ordering the bystanders to leave the saloon. Critically wounded, Bill promises to see Munny in hell before Munny executes him. Munny then leaves Big Whiskey, warning the townsfolk that he will return for more vengeance if Logan is not buried properly or if any of the prostitutes are harmed.
During the epilogue, a title card states that Munny and his children left the pig farm and they are rumored to have moved to San Francisco, prospering in dry goods.

Cast

The film was written by David Webb Peoples, who had written the Oscar nominated film The Day After Trinity and co-written Blade Runner with Hampton Fancher. The concept for the film dated to 1976, when it was developed under the titles The Cut-Whore Killings and The William Munny Killings. By Eastwood's own recollection he was given the script in the "early 80s" although he did not immediately pursue it, because, according to him, "I thought I should do some other things first".
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

Box office

The film debuted at the top position in its opening weekend. Its earnings of $15,018,007 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 film in North America. In its 35th weekend, capitalizing on its Oscar wins, the film returned to the Top 10, ranking at No. 8 with a gross of $2,538,358, an improvement of 197 percent over the weekend before where it made $855,188. The film closed on July 15, 1993, having spent nearly a full year in theaters, having earned $101,157,447 in North America, and another $58,000,000 internationally for a total of $159,157,447 worldwide.

Critical response

Unforgiven received widespread acclaim. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes has a 96% approval rating based on 104 reviews, with an average rating of 8.82/10. The website's critical consensus states, "As both director and star, Clint Eastwood strips away decades of Hollywood varnish applied to the Wild West, and emerges with a series of harshly eloquent statements about the nature of violence." Metacritic gave the film a score of 85 out of 100 based on 33 critical reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Jack Methews of the Los Angeles Times described Unforgiven 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—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. Despite his initial reservations, Ebert eventually included the film in his "The Great Movies" list.
"Unforgiven" was named one of the ten best films of the year on 76 critics' lists, according to a poll of the nation's top 106 film critics.

Accolades

AwardCategoryRecipientsResult
Academy AwardsBest PictureClint Eastwood
Academy AwardsBest DirectorClint Eastwood
Academy AwardsBest ActorClint Eastwood
Academy AwardsBest Supporting ActorGene Hackman
Academy AwardsBest Original ScreenplayDavid Webb Peoples
Academy AwardsBest SoundLes Fresholtz, Vern Poore, Dick Alexander and Rob Young
Academy AwardsBest Art DirectionHenry Bumstead and Janice Blackie-Goodine
Academy AwardsBest CinematographyJack N. Green
Academy AwardsBest Film EditingJoel Cox
BAFTA AwardsBest Supporting ActorGene Hackman
BAFTA AwardsBest FilmClint Eastwood
BAFTA AwardsBest DirectionClint Eastwood
BAFTA AwardsBest Original ScreenplayDavid Webb Peoples
BAFTA AwardsBest SoundLes Fresholtz, Vern Poore, Dick Alexander and Rob Young
Golden Globe AwardsBest DirectorClint Eastwood
Golden Globe AwardsBest Supporting ActorGene Hackman
Golden Globe AwardsBest Motion Picture – DramaClint Eastwood
Golden Globe AwardsBest ScreenplayDavid Webb Peoples

Legacy

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. The main theme song, "Claudia's Theme," was composed by Clint Eastwood.
In 2004, Unforgiven was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthecically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked Peoples' script for Unforgiven as the 30th greatest ever written.
;American Film Institute recognition
In June 2008, Unforgiven was listed as the fourth best American film in the western genre in the American Film Institute's "AFI's 10 Top 10" list.
Unforgiven was released on DVD and VHS on September 24, 2002. It was released on Blu-ray Book 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. Unforgiven was released on 4K UHD Blu-Ray on May 16, 2017.

Remake

A Japanese adaptation of Unforgiven, directed by Lee Sang-il and starring Ken Watanabe, was released in 2013. The plot of the 2013 version is very similar to the original, but it takes place in Japan during the Meiji period, with the main character being a samurai instead of a bandit.