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for his loss. The women, led by Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher), believe a
terrible wrong has been committed in their minds nothing less than
murder and they wish to see justice done. Strawberry Alice is enraged that
Little Bill thinks so little of the women that he does virtually nothing for
them. She convinces the other whores to pool their funds and come up with
a bounty of one thousand dollars paid to the man who brings the cowboy
who did the cutting to justice.
Among those who come to town is English Bob (Richard Harris), an infa-
mous gunslinger who is best known for shooting the Chinese on the rail-
road, but who fancies himself a legendary gunfighter. Traveling with his
biographer in tow, he arrives in Big Whiskey and ignores the signs stating he
is to turn over all firearms. Upon exiting a barbershop he encounters Little
Bill, who disarms him of his weapons and then beats him to a bloody pulp,
kicking and stomping the man senseless in front of Mr. Beauchamp (Saul
Rubinek), his biographer.
Meanwhile on a pig farm in a filthy pigsty, William Munney (Eastwood)
is trying to separate hogs, keeping the sick ones from the good ones. His
children are helping, but it is not going well. A young man calling himself
the Schofield Kid (Jamz Woolvett) rides up and asks him if he is the same
William Munney of legend. If so, he is headed to Big Whiskey to kill the man
who cut up Delilah, and if Munney were to join him, he would split the
bounty with him. Munney insists he is not the man the Kid is looking for,
but once the younger man leaves, Munney has second thoughts. That money
would help get his kids a better way of life and offer them all a second
chance. He heads to his friend Ned Logan s (Freeman) house, and the pair
head off in search of the Kid. Once they find him, they are forced to listen
to his constant tales of adventure and killing sprees, though they come to
realize that he is nearly blind and likely has never killed a man. Upon arriv-
ing in Big Whiskey, Munney, too, ignores the sign about firearms and is
whipped nearly to death by Little Bill, who begins each interrogation with a
smile that quickly turns into a sadistic one. He very nearly kills Will, who is
taken away and cared for by the whores.
When he awakens, he finds that Ned does not have the stuff for killing
anymore. Ned leaves, but he does not get far. Little Bill catches him and
whips him to death, propping his body outside of the saloon in town. The
Schofield Kid finally gets his chance to kill the man who cut Delilah, and he
Unforgiven (1992) 95
does indeed kill him while the man sits in an outhouse doing his business.
The killing does not have the desired effect on the Kid s life, however, and
when the whores bring the two remaining men their money as they wait just
outside of town, he breaks down with the horror of what he has done in
committing murder for the first time.
The young whore forever scarred in the act of violence that sets the action
in motion, Delilah, makes clear to Will that Ned is dead and lying in a cof-
fin outside the bar. Ned s death unleashes the demons within Will s soul, and
he mounts his horse during a ferocious thunderstorm and rides into town.
Gone is the unsteadiness that dominated Will s early days of this journey. It
is replaced by a deadly sense of purpose as he boldly rides into town and sees
his friend dead in front of the saloon.
Walking into the bar, he guns down Skinny for having the audacity to dec-
orate his bar with his friend. He then turns his sights on Little Bill, but not
before the other men in the bar attempt to take him down. Munney kills five
men in all, never stopping to reload and just firing his guns at them, saving
the last shotgun blast for the head of Little Bill, who cannot quite believe he
is going to die like this. Like a man possessed, he slaughters everyone he
intends to kill, seeming to summon the demons that so worked through him
in the past and becoming the legend before the eyes of those in the bar. Fin-
ished with what he came to do, Munney rides out of town on a pale horse,
just as death did in the Book of Revelation, and threatens anyone who comes
after him with sure death. The last title card states that he moved to San
Francisco and prospered in dry goods for some time.
Eastwood made a seething statement on violence and death that stunned
those who saw the film with its raw, visceral power. In this film there is no glory
in death, and there is nothing pretty about the violence. One pulls the trigger
and someone dies, and one is left to deal with that for the rest of one s life.
There is so much more to killing a man than pulling a trigger; in this West,
killing eats away at a man s soul, leaving him forever haunted and unforgiven.
Like John Ford did with The Searchers, Eastwood made a film in which the
tone was exceptionally dark, and it remains so throughout the film, never
redeeming any of the characters. In fact, there seems to be something awak-
ened in Munney after he takes a savage beating at the hands of Little Bill, ris-
ing, resurrected to go at these men with guns blazing.
Eastwood s performance as Will Munney was by far the finest of his
impressive career, finding the perfect tone for the character to suggest the
depths of hell in his work. Munney has done terrible things willingly, will do
them again willingly, and knows that he is utterly damned for what he has
done but must live with it. He throws his goodness into his wife and kids,
and when Little Bill unleashes the demon from hell inside of him, he takes it
out on those who deserve it. Never before had Eastwood so dominated the
screen; never before had he been so real and so authentic in a role, leaving
behind the movie star persona.
96 Clint Eastwood
Equally brilliant in an unsettling way was Gene Hackman as the sadistic
Little Bill, a sheriff who believes that what he is doing is for the absolute
good, which is truly terrifying because power in the hands of a man like that
always has gone terribly wrong. The look of sick joy on his face as he whips
Ned, leaning in to tell him it is going to get much worse, is disturbing. Hack-
man s very presence radiates menace and pure danger, a maniac hiding
behind a smile. Perhaps what is most troubling about his character is that he
so believes in what he is doing, and his sense of right and righteousness is
frightening. Like Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo s Nest (1975),
there is nothing quite so frightening as someone utterly wrong who believes
without question that they are right.
Morgan Freeman did solid work as Ned Logan, as did Richard Harris as
English Bob. Young Canadian actor Jamz Woolvett had some impressive
scenes as the Kid, and Frances Fisher gave her usual excellent acting job as
Strawberry Alice.
When the film opened the following August, the it immediately received
rave reviews, as critics fell over themselves trying to find superlatives to
describe the film.
A classic Western for the ages, wrote Todd McCarthy in Variety, the
industry trade bible. Clint Eastwood has crafted a tense, hard-edged,
superbly dramatic yarn that is also an exceedingly intelligent meditation on
the West, its myths, its heroes. Playing a stubbly, worn-out, has-been outlaw
who can barely mount his horse at first, Eastwood, unafraid to show his age,
is outstanding in his best clipped, understated manner. McCarthy seemed
to understand what Eastwood was trying to say and where he was going with
the film, something that would quickly become apparent to most North
American film critics.
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