unforgiven parent movie review

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Unforgiven | 1992 | R | - 3.6.5

SEX/NUDITY 3 - In the opening scene, a man and woman are shown having "mechanical" sex, in a brothel. They are partially dressed. Women of the brothel are shown in undergarments of the period. No nudity.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - In the first scene, a woman gets cut on the face several times. Very little is shown, but the sound of slicing is audible. Richard Harris is kicked repeatedly until bloody. Morgan Freeman is whipped with a bull-whip while strapped to the bars of a jail cell. Clint Eastwood is kicked and punched until he can no longer stand. Several people are shot and are shown bleeding. Violence is not cartoonish; it is shown with great realism.

LANGUAGE 5 - The F-word is used once, and some scattered foul language.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Death, violence, prostitution and the complexity of killing: For money, honor or any other noble or ignoble cause.

MESSAGE - You really can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated , Special , Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.

REVIEWS See ratings & reviews at Critics.com

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THE ASSIGNED NUMBERS Unlike the MPAA we do not assign one inscrutable rating based on age but 3 objective ratings for SEX/NUDITY , VIOLENCE/GORE & LANGUAGE on a scale of 0 to 10, from lowest to highest depending on quantity & context | more |

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This title has:

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A very intense, but mature, western about the effects of violence.

• Too much sex
• Too much drinking/drugs/smoking

Its an Oscar winner that deserves it. See it.

Brutal old west tale tells it how it really was, the evil of william munny.

• Great messages
• Great role models

What to Watch Next

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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Best action movies for kids.

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Retired Old West gunslinger William Munny reluctantly takes on one last job, with the help of his old partner Ned Logan and a young man, The "Schofield Kid." Retired Old West gunslinger William Munny reluctantly takes on one last job, with the help of his old partner Ned Logan and a young man, The "Schofield Kid." Retired Old West gunslinger William Munny reluctantly takes on one last job, with the help of his old partner Ned Logan and a young man, The "Schofield Kid."

• Clint Eastwood
• David Webb Peoples
• Gene Hackman
• Morgan Freeman
• 744 User reviews
• 135 Critic reviews
• 85 Metascore
• 51 wins & 47 nominations total

Top cast 42

• Little Bill Daggett

• English Bob

• The 'Schofield Kid'

• W.W. Beauchamp

• Strawberry Alice

• Delilah Fitzgerald

• Davey Bunting

• Skinny Dubois
• (as Tara Dawn Frederick)

• Crow Creek Kate

• (as Shane Meier)
• Penny Munny

• Sally Two Trees
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Best Picture Winners by Year

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Did you know

• Trivia The final screen credit reads, "Dedicated to Sergio and Don", referring to Clint Eastwood 's mentors, Sergio Leone and Don Siegel .
• Goofs (at around 55 mins) English Bob is in jail and Little Bill is reading from W.W. Beauchamp's novel, but a sheet of script is taped onto the page and clearly visible.

Little Bill Daggett : You'd be William Munny out of Missouri. Killer of women and children.

Will Munny : That's right. I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.

• Crazy credits At the end of the credits, there is caption reading, "Dedicated to Sergio and Don". This is a reference to late directors Sergio Leone (who directed Clint Eastwood in the Dollars trilogy) and Don Siegel (who directed Eastwood in Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz).
• Alternate versions The end credits in the current TV prints contain a black screen in addition the 2018 Warner Bros. Pictures plaster.
• Connections Featured in Clint Eastwood on Westerns (1992)
• Soundtracks Claudia's Song (uncredited) Written by Clint Eastwood and Lennie Niehaus

User reviews 744

• Kaserynofthegyre
• Jan 29, 1999
• How long is Unforgiven? Powered by Alexa
• What is 'Unforgiven' about?
• Is "Unforgiven" based on a book?
• Is the character Will Munny based on a real person?
• August 7, 1992 (United States)
• United States
• The Cut Whore Killings
• Brooks, Alberta, Canada
• Warner Bros.
• Malpaso Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $14,400,000 (estimated)
• $101,167,799
• $15,018,007
• Aug 9, 1992
• $159,167,799

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 10 minutes

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‘unforgiven’: thr’s 1992 review.

On Aug. 3, 1992, Warner Bros. premiered Clint Eastwood's R-rated Western.

By Duane Byrge

Duane Byrge

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On Aug. 3, 1992, Warner Bros. premiered Clint Eastwood’s R-rated Western Unforgiven . The film went on to win four Oscars, including best picture and director honors, at the 65th Academy Awards. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below: 

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With the squinty calm of an old pro, Eastwood has scoped the big notion sites of the Old West and shot asunder Americana myths, namely the romanticism of killing. Unforgiven is both a dark look into a bad man’s soul and a hard reckoning over a growing country’s bloody innards. Like a shooter whose skill allows him to take careful aim with a rifle rather than going for the easy splatter of a buckshot, director Eastwood’s big picture is suredly  calibrated: He points your eye to the tiniest specs, the most telling and powerful parts of this moral panorama. 

No feel-good movie — though it is coarsed with gusty humor and against-the-grain grandeur — Unforgiven gives no quarter to sticking scared to the box-office trail. It won’t garner the whoops-and-hollers of those whose systems only tolerate basic, market-driven pablum . Still, critical acclaim as well as Eastwood’s own box-office popularity should guarantee a solid, end-of-summer, box-office trail for Warner Bros. You’ll hear, perhaps, a more resounding salvo around the next bend when the European market, more appreciative of Eastwood’s directorial skills and ever eager to see the dark side of Americana, gets a glimpse. 

The three head up to Big Whiskey, Wyo ., where a smart and ornery sheriff (Gene Hackman ) parcels out the law. He’s a latter-day gun-control fanatic — no firearms allowed in Big Whiskey, period. Yup, we’re riding for a showdown here, folks. But it’s the ride itself that’s the real gunpowder here: Screenwriter David Webb Peoples’ ( Blade Runner ) yarn is the psychological-moral journey of a desperate man who reverts back to the killer he once was. 

While not a pretty picture — no ride-into-the-sunset cliches  — Unforgiven is a magnificently realized work. In addition to Eastwood’s fine, rough performance, Hackman and Freeman stand out. 

Under Eastwood’s deliberately assured guidance, Unforgiven shimmers with dark majesties, a fitting tribute to his mentors Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, to whom the film is dedicated. Lennie   Niehaus ‘ spare-plucked score, with its winding cadence, and Jack Green’s wide-screen lensing , with its jolting scopes, are the high points of the film’s many resonances . — Duane Byrge , originally published on July 31, 1992

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(LLL, VVV, SSS, A, H, M) 58 obscenities & 17 profanities; excessive violence (a woman's face is slashed repeatedly with a knife, frequent shootings (many in cold blood), beatings, kickings, etc.); fornication, sexual immorality (story revolves around Old West brothel) and semi-nudity; drinking & drunkenness; revisionist history; and, revenge motif.

More Detail:

In his film, UNFORGIVEN, Client Eastwood transforms the heroic Western into an ironic tale about a killer who can’t escape his past. Set in Big Whisky, Wyoming, in the 1800’s, UNFORGIVEN opens in a brothel where a cowboy slashes a prostitute’s face while his friend watches. When Little Bill, the sheriff, merely reprimands the culprits, the prostitutes raise money to avenge the crime. The “Scofield Kid” contacts William Munny, a killer who has settled down, to join him in the bounty hunt. Munny does so reluctantly having promised his late wife that his killing days were over. On the way, he picks up his partner, Ned. When they arrive, Little Bill beats Munny mercilessly. After Munny recovers, he kills one of the cowboys. Little Bill’s men catch Ned and whip him to death. Meanwhile, the Kid kills the slasher. When Munny finds out about Ned, he takes on the sheriff and his cohorts.

UNFORGIVEN portrays a hopeless, depressing, existential world, where man is at the mercy of hostile forces which force him to commit heinous crimes to survive. Though this portrait of the Old West demeans history, it does capture the despair of those modern humanists who are truly without hope. Ultimately, UNFORGIVEN fails as entertainment for want of a satisfying climax. Eastwood fans who are expecting a cathartic experience will only find despair.

Film Review: ‘Unforgiven’

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

• Remember Me 14 years ago
• Shutter Island 14 years ago
• Green Zone 14 years ago

“ Unforgiven ” is a classic Western for the ages. In his 10th excursion into the genre that made him a star more than 25 years ago, Clint Eastwood has crafted a tense, hard-edged, superbly dramatic yarn that is also an exceedingly intelligent meditation on the West, its myths and its heroes. With its grizzled cast of outstanding actors playing outlaws who have survived their primes, this is unapologetically a mature, contemplative film, with all that implies for B.O. prospects. But buffs, longtime Eastwood fans and connoisseurs of the form should love it, resulting in good word-of-mouth and sustained business through Labor Day and possibly beyond.

Eastwood has dedicated the film “to Sergio and Don,” references to his most important mentors, Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, and it is easy to see why. Not only is the salute a tip of the hat to the directors who presumably taught him the most, but it signals his intention to reflect upon the sort of terse, tough, hard-bitten characters he became famous for in their pictures, as he plays a man described as being “as cold as the snow.”

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From one angle, Eastwood’s Bill Munny can be seen as a hypothetical portrait of the Man With No Name in his sunset years. A widower with two young kids whose late wife “cured me of drink and wickedness,” Munny has nothing to show for wayward youth except a decrepit pig farm.

But when a hotshot by the name of the “Schofield Kid” (Jaimz Woolvett) turns up offering to split a $1,000 reward being offered for the hides of two men who grue- somely sliced up a prostitute, Munny reluctantly straps on his holster for the first time in more than a decade in order to earn the much-needed loot.

To the Kid’s annoyance, Munny insists upon bringing along his former partner-in-crime Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), who is living peaceably on a farm.

Beating this group to their destination of Big Whiskey is railroad gunman English Bob (Richard Harris), an arrogant mythomaniac and rabid monarchist traveling with a biographer (Saul Rubinek) who memorializes his bloody accomplishments in dime novels.

Outlaws and bounty hunters around Big Whiskey face a problem by the name of Sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), a brutal former badman who allows no one to carry firearms in town.

As storm clouds gather, the bounty-hunting trio makes its way toward town, with Munny continually rejecting his past even as he rides to his destiny with it. Resolution to the leisurely but tightly wound drama comes not in an expected, standard showdown, but much more complexly, in a series of separate confrontations that are alternately tragic and touching. Final shots, which have the survivor of the climactic bloodbath riding off, not into the sunset, but into a nocturnal downpour, constitute a hauntingly poetic variation on the usual Western fadeout.

Eastwood’s telling of this grim, compelling tale is at least as impressive as in his best prior outings as a director — “The Outlaw Josey Wales,””Bird” and “White Hunter, Black Heart.”

But the acting ensemble is stronger than in any of Eastwood’s previous pix, and David Webb Peoples’ beautifully crafted, resonant screenplay has inspired the filmmaker to develop fully several themes that have run throughout his work, which is what finally puts “Unforgiven” on such a high level in its genre.

The dilemma of the outlaw whose infamous past makes it hard for him to put down his guns has cropped up in many films, notably “The Gunfighter,” but Eastwood and Peoples’ approach is bracingly anti-mythic and anti-heroic, as well as disarmingly humorous.

As he comes ever closer to his rendezvous with Sheriff Daggett and his former self, he becomes increasingly physically ill until he faces up to what he has to do. Along the way, Munny teaches the Kid a few things about what it means to shoot someone. After the countless people Eastwood characters have gunned down over the years, the pain and difficulty invested in each killing here lends them an extraordinary and profound weight.

Recurring Eastwood themes involving humiliation and physical pain are present, and a strong feminist streak runs through the center of the story, as it is a close-knit group of hookers who defy Sheriff Daggett in the first place and put up the reward money for their mutilated co-worker.

For once, Eastwood has surrounded himself with an ensemble cast of top-drawer actors, with terrific results. 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. Hackman deliciously realizes the two sides of the sheriff’s quicksilver personality, the folksy raconteur and the vicious sadist.

Freeman, whose race is never remarked upon by the other characters even though the Kid clearly resents him, poignantly portrays a man whose loyalty to his old partner wars with his common sense, and Harris has a high old time looking mean and menacing and ranting about the uncivilized nature of democracy. Other performances are solid down the line.

Technically, film is superior. Vet production designer Henry Bumstead has designed a distinctive old Western town, and lenser Jack N. Green’s widescreen images have a natural, unforced beauty that imaginatively make use of the mostly flat expanses of the Alberta locations. Lennie Niehaus’ lovely score is mournful and melodious.

The richness of the material fully merits the extended, expert treatment accorded it, and anyone with a taste for Western films and the myths born on the frontier will have a feast with “Unforgiven.”

• Production: A Warner Bros. release of a Malpaso production. Produced, directed by Clint Eastwood. Executive producer, David Valdes. Screenplay, David Webb Peoples.
• Crew: Camera (Technicolor, Panavision widescreen), Jack N. Green; editor, Joel Cox; music, Lennie Niehaus; production design, Henry Bumstead; art direction, Rick Roberts, Adrian Gorton; set design, James J. Murakami; set decoration, Janice Blackie-Goodine; sound (Dolby), Rob Young; associate producer, Julian Ludwig; assistant director, Scott Maitland; casting, Phyllis Huffman, Stuart Aikins (Canada). Reviewed at Warner Bros. studios, Burbank, June 24, 1992. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 130 min.
• With: Bill Munny - Clint Eastwood Little Bill Daggett - Gene Hackman Ned Logan - Morgan Freeman English Bob - Richard Harris The "Schofield Kid" - Jaimz Woolvett W.W. Beauchamp - Saul Rubinek Strawberry Alice - Frances Fisher Delilah Fitzgerald - Anna Thomson Quick Mike - David Mucci Davey Bunting - Rob Campbell Skinny Dubois - Anthony James

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Review/Film: Unforgiven; A Western Without Good Guys

By Vincent Canby

• Aug. 7, 1992

TIME has been good to Clint Eastwood. If possible, he looks even taller, leaner and more mysteriously possessed than he did in Sergio Leone's seminal "Fistful of Dollars" a quarter of a century ago. The years haven't softened him. They have given him the presence of some fierce force of nature, which may be why the landscapes of the mythic, late 19th-century West become him, never more so than in his new "Unforgiven."

As written by David Webb Peoples and directed by Mr. Eastwood, "Unforgiven" is a most entertaining western that pays homage to the great tradition of movie westerns while surreptitiously expressing a certain amount of skepticism. Mr. Eastwood has learned a lot from his mentors, including the great Don Siegel ("Two Mules for Sister Sara" and "The Beguiled," among others), a director with no patience for sentimentality.

The time is the 1880's. The principal setting is Big Whiskey, a forlorn hamlet in that vast American no-man's land of high plains edged by mountains, somewhere between St. Louis and San Francisco but not on any map.

Late one night a couple of cowboys are on the second floor of the saloon with the girls. Suddenly one of the cowboys whips out his knife and slashes the face of Delilah, the prostitute he's with. It seems that she made a rude comment about his anatomy. Instead of arresting the cowboys, Little Bill Daggett, the sheriff, allows them to get off with the understanding that they hand over six horses to the saloon keeper.

Strawberry Alice, the victim's best friend, is outraged. "We may be whores," she says, "but we aren't horses." Alice, Delilah and the other girls pool their savings and offer a bounty of $1,000 to anybody who will murder the cowboys.

Thus "Unforgiven" becomes an epic about the revenge of whores. It's not sending up the women. Rather it's equating Old Western codes of honor with the handful of men who set out to collect the bounty, motivated in varying degrees by economic necessity, greed and half-baked notions of glory.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, the scene that clint eastwood cut to make unforgiven a classic.

The end of " Unforgiven " sat oddly with me after my first viewing, even though I loved the film overall and consider it to be Clint Eastwood's second-best work as a director, after " The Outlaw Josey Wales ." It took me a while to conclude that my struggles with the ending had to do with the swift resolution of the story, which denied the main character, a retired and widowed gunfighter who gets back into the business to collect a bounty on a cowhand who cut up a brothel worker, an expected story beat that would've told us how Munny felt about the decision he'd made, what the mission did to him, and how it affected the relationship with the two children he left behind when he rode off to kill again.

Essentially, Clint Eastwood 's character, William Munny, goes through the standard Clint Eastwood hero arc of getting beaten within an inch of his life (in some movies, he's actually killed and rises from the dead), then coming back to righteously murder a bunch of people.

But over time, I grew to appreciate and even appreciate the elliptical nature of the ending. It reminded me of " Taxi Driver ," another film in which the main character (disturbed cabbie Travis Bickle) kills several people, but the film moves ahead to a coda that the audience can't be quite sure how to take. Travis (spoiler alert on a nearly 50-year old film) recovers from his injuries and is thanked by the parents of Iris ( Jodie Foster ), the child prostitute he rescued, and returns to his old job. One night he finds that the same "dream girl" who once rejected him, Cybill Shepherd's Betsy, has gotten into his cab and is treating him with what seems like admiration and a touch of flirtatiousness. 

Is this a dream sequence? The movie never tells us, instead letting us sit within the oddness of the encounter (it feels scripted by Travis' imagination), then adding a dissonant note at the end as Travis looks at his own reflected eyes in the cab's rearview mirror, then pushes the mirror away so that it reflects the blur of nighttime traffic instead. 

"Unforgiven" doesn't have a scene precisely like that one. But it finds its own way to discombobulate the viewer. 

After Munny kills the people who beat him up and then tortured and killed his partner Ned ( Morgan Freeman ), he rides out of town during a rainstorm (with an American flag flapping in the background of one shot) and declares that if anybody comes after him, he'll kill them, and their families as well. Then there's a dissolve, and the horror movie score gives way to a gentle acoustic guitar piece, and we find ourselves looking at a silhouetted wide shot of Munny back on his homestead. A printed title card says: “Some years later, Mrs. Ansonia Feathers made the arduous journey to Hodgeman County to visit the last resting place of her only daughter. William Munny had long since disappeared with the children... some said to San Francisco where it was rumored he prospered in dry goods. And there was nothing on the marker to explain to Mrs. Feathers why her only daughter had married a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."

It's an ending that complicates rather than clarifies what we've seen. The entire story is about Munny telling people "I ain't like that no more" and then briefly becoming "like that" again to exact revenge. But what price does he pay as a result of his regression? It almost seems as if the urge to kill again had been with Munny for a long time after his retirement from the outlaw business, and once he got it out of his system he was okay, and could live a peaceful life. 

Then again, that's me projecting onto a movie—which is what viewers do when they're denied more explicit details. 

David Webb Peoples' screenplay and Eastwood's direction don't give us any indication whatsoever of how this bloody episode late in William Munny's life affected him or his family. The final line of the printed title card tells us that the mother of Munny's late wife never knew Munny as anything other than a killer, and being left with nothing but a simple gravestone didn't solve the mystery of how her daughter ended up marrying him and having two kids with him. The mother isn't even a character in the film. This coda is the first we even hear of her or learn her name. For all we know, he was tormented by his regression for the rest of his life but never said anything to his kids or anybody else. Maybe he left the farm with the kids to escape both the memory of his wife’s death as well as his regret of the way he betrayed her civilizing influence.

Or maybe Munny did exorcise his demons by releasing them against his enemies. Who can say? Not even Sigmund Freud, who was working out his theories in Vienna when guys like Munny were roaming the West. 

I think if you asked Eastwood whether he wanted to send the message "sometimes you gotta kill a few people to work through your issues" by ending the movie as he did, he'd laugh in your face or just not answer. He's not the sort of person who explains or justifies himself, at least not when it comes to stuff like that. Maybe he meant to say that, maybe he didn't, or maybe he just made an instinctive choice because it seemed right at the time, like a jazz pianist deciding whether to keep going on a solo or stop.

I belatedly came across some writing about the film that clarified my initial mixed feelings, as well as how they settled on admiration for the film. I am not only entirely content with the existing ending now, I'm glad he didn't do what was originally in the script, because if he had, the film would've been too neat, and I don't think it would've lodged in viewers' minds for over thirty years and inspired argument and analysis.

For the 30th anniversary two years ago, Peoples—who also wrote or cowrote "Twelve Monkeys," " Blade Runner ," and "Soldier"—gave interviews about "Unforgiven" which revealed that there was another scene in his screenplay (originally titled "The William Munny Killings") that came just before the actual final image. Eastwood filmed the scene but got into the editing room and decided to cut it. 

According to a Yahoo! News interview with the screenwriter:

“After taking care of his bloody business in the town of Big Whiskey, the screenplay ends with Munny returning to his Kansas homestead where he has a tender reunion with his children, calling his daughter "a lady" and gently praising his son for taking care of the farm. But a tension underlies that tenderness as he keeps the truth of his journey hidden from both children. ‘I guess you didn't kill nobody then,’ Will Jr. remarks to his father after Munny declines to explain the exact reason for their sudden financial windfall. ‘Naw, son, I didn't kill nobody,’ the killer lies through gritted teeth. Peoples says that he modeled the scene directly after the final moments of Francis Ford Coppola's ‘The Godfather,’ where Michael ( Al Pacino ) lies to Kay ( Diane Keaton ), about his involvement in the gangland massacre that solidified his standing as the new Don Corleone. (Funnily enough, Coppola was originally attached to direct The William Munny Killings before Eastwood acquired the script.) ‘What's good about that scene is that it means that the killings aren't triumphant killings,’ the writer explains. ‘Munny doesn't say, 'I killed that motherf***er.' He's ashamed of what he's done.’”

Eastwood told Peoples he cut that scene mainly for pacing reasons. The movie felt like it was over, and it didn't seem wise to keep people around for five more minutes. 

Peoples also says in the interview that he was inspired to write "Unforgiven" by watching two movies released in 1976. One is " The Shootist ," starring John Wayne as a terminally ill gunfighter who wants to go out peacefully but gets pulled into one last bloody showdown anyway. The other, as it turns out, was "Taxi Driver," the very film that "Unforgiven" reminded me of when I saw it way back in '92. It's almost hilariously perfect: if you put "The Shootist" and "Taxi Driver" together, you get "Unforgiven."

You also end up with a film that, like "Taxi Driver" and so many other bloody meditations on violence and masculinity, manages to eat its cake and have it, too, but in a fascinating rather than weaselly way, and leaves the audience to sort through conflicted feelings without help from the filmmakers.

Is Travis better, worse, or the same at the end of "Taxi Driver"? Was that scene in the cab with Betsy a figment of his distorted imagination? Is he the living embodiment of that classic line from Simon & Garfunkel's song " The Boxer " that "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"? Is William Munny healed or destroyed by what happened to him when he left his farm? What attitude, if any, does either film have about violence, whether practiced by a rogue free agent like Munny or Travis or a representative of the state like Little Bill or the government that sent Travis to Vietnam? 

We don't know. 

The films are better for us not knowing. 

Films are always better when they don't explain everything.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Unforgiven (United States, 1992)

Clint Eastwood's reputation as a Hollywood icon was founded on two roles: The Man with No Name, who starred in three of Sergio Leone's "Spaghetti Westerns" ( A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and the Ugly ), and "Dirty" Harry Callahan, who made five appearances during the 1970s and 1980s. Unforgiven was seen by many as a reaction to (although not a repudiation of) the Dirty Harry character. To some, Dirty Harry was the embodiment of violence without consequences, of a shoot-first, ask-questions-later mentality. Unforgiven , however, approaches gunfights and death from a different vantage point, illustrating that there are real and permanent consequences to violence - consequences that become etched in the mind and the soul.

By the time Eastwood embarked upon making Unforgiven , he was established as a director as well as an actor. He was known as a risk-taker behind the camera, having made such offbeat pictures as Bird and White Hunter Black Heart . Eastwood followed up Unforgiven with the underrated A Perfect World and The Bridges of Madison County . Trying to find a pattern in his choices is like trying to find two identical snowflakes - an exercise in futility but not without its fascination. In fact, few actor/directors have had more versatile careers. Even Woody Allen, who rivals Eastwood when it comes to appearing in his own movies, cannot claim as impressive a resume.

Unforgiven is a Western made in an era when the popularity of Westerns was at a low ebb. Ironically, it became the second Western in three years to win the Best Picture Oscar. The other was Dances with Wolves in 1991. Both Unforgiven and Dances with Wolves , while being fundamentally different motion pictures, share a common quality: they are radically unlike the Westerns of old. Unforgiven looks like a Western. It has many of the conventions of a Western. But it doesn't feel like one. The violence is brutal, the sheriff isn't the good guy, and the story is saturated with moral ambiguity. That's not to say all the Westerns made in the '40s, '50s, and '60s were simplistic, but few evidence the ethical complexity that Eastwood embraces in Unforgiven .

The story opens with two branches that will eventually intersect. They're speeding freight trains on a collision course, although it takes a little while to figure that out. The small town of Big Whiskey is a typical frontier place, with a saloon, a whorehouse, an undertaker, a barbershop, and a few other small businesses. It's lorded over by Sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), a man who loves two things: the Law and building his house. He has a sadistic streak but is incorruptible. In another movie, he might be the hero, but in Eastwood's view of the world, things aren't that simple. One day, there's an incident at the brothel. A drunk and irate customer repeatedly slashes a prostitute (Anna Thomson) across the face. Little Bill deals out the punishment: as reparation for the damage of "property," the attacker must pay the prostitute's handler a certain number of horses. There's no jail time, no whipping, and no recompense to the injured woman. Her fellow workers pool their money and send out the word that they'll pay $1000 to any assassin who eliminates the offender.

Hundreds of miles away, the former infamous killer and recent widower William Munny (Eastwood) is struggling to raise his two young children by making a living as a farmer. When "The Schofield Kid" (Jaimz Woolvett) arrives looking for a partner to accompany him to Big Whiskey to earn the reward, William is initially reluctant. Later, however, after taking a hard look at his prospects, he changes his mind. He's not the man he once was, but he needs the money. So he recruits his old partner, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), and sets off after the Schofield Kid.

While William, Ned, and the Kid are on their way, Unforgiven pauses to provide a side story. Gunslinger English Bob (Richard Harris) arrives in Big Whiskey with his biographer, W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek), in tow. He's there to deliver justice and collect the reward but Little Bill teaches him about the virtues of obeying the law and the folly of vigilantism. He also provides an object lesson to Beauchamp about the difficulty of killing. Then, to see the record straight, he deconstructs English Bob's legend by revealing some unsavory truths.

Thus are the players and their motivations established. Because the viewer is invited into the story through the viewpoint of William Munny, he is naturally the most sympathetic character. It is important not to forget, however, that he is a seasoned killer who, in his day, murdered women and children in cold blood. And, while Little Bill may have a streak of cruelty running through his veins, he's a man of justice. One of Unforgiven 's assets is the way it overturns conventions, taking the man who is typically the hero and making him the villain, while transforming the traditional bad guy into a sympathetic protagonist. This is much like what Kevin Costner did with Dances with Wolves , where he inverted the "Cowboys and Indians" institution.

Unforgiven is about the price of killing and violence. Munny's soul has been so soiled that one wonders whether he's past the point of redemption. Initially, he fights against being drawn back into his old ways, insisting that "I'm not the same person" but, in the end, he reverts to what he was. For the viewer, who sympathizes with Munny and wants to believe he can change, it's a sad transformation. The climactic gunfight, which in many Westerns would be a moment of triumph, plays out here with a note of sadness and resignation. Meanwhile, there's Ned, who discovers at a critical moment that he can't return to the patterns of old. And The Schofield Kid, who idealizes killing from a far, finds it's less appealing when experienced firsthand. Munny has the film's most memorable quote when he comments: "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."

Unforgiven 's acting is first-rate. It earned a Supporting Actor Oscar for Hackman and a Lead Actor nomination for Eastwood. One could argue that both Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris also deserved Supporting Actor consideration. Hackman does an excellent job bringing out the good and the bad in Little Bill, refusing to allow the character to become a one-dimensional antagonist. His standout scene is the one in which he instructs Beauchamp about the real Old West. Eastwood, meanwhile, personifies the weariness of a man of violence who's trying to fight against his nature. A lot of the conflict is internal but we catch enough glimpses of it to know it's going on. We also see the point at which the surrender of the new man to the old one occurs.

The set design and Jack Green's cinematography (both nominated) provide viewers with visual cues they will be conversant with from a genre whose conventions are deeply rooted in American cinema. The dusty, barren streets and ramshackle buildings are necessary to impart a sense of familiarity that the storyline takes pains to deconstruct. Our first views of Big Whiskey establish a set of expectations, re-enforced by the way the town has been erected (on location, not on a set) and the way the early scenes are shot, that are necessary for Unforgiven 's approach to have its full impact. Eastwood chose a veteran crew to work on this film and the resulting technical excellence is visible in every frame.

Despite its dark nature, Unforgiven is sprinkled with humor. Some is of the gallows variety, such as Munny's comment after a shooting: "Well, you sure killed the hell outta that guy." Little Bill refers to English Bob not as the "Duke of Death" but as the "Duck of Death." And Munny repeatedly has trouble mounting his temperamental nag. Moments such as these keep Unforgiven from becoming too grim because, ultimately, this is an unsettling motion picture. Whether or not it represents Eastwood's best work as a director will remain a point of debate. There are plenty of other fine movies in his filmography to rally behind. Two things are clear, however. Unforgiven was one of a few films instrumental in re-shaping the way movie-goers thought of the Western. And none of Eastwood's films did a better job of distancing the actor from his Dirty Harry alter-ego.

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Time Out says

Release details.

• Duration: 131 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Clint Eastwood
• Screenwriter: David Webb Peoples
• Anthony James
• Richard Harris
• Saul Rubinek
• Gene Hackman
• David Mucci
• Frances Fisher
• Anna Thomson
• Morgan Freeman
• Jaimz Woolvett
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By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

In a directorial high-wire act on a par with Bird and White Hunter, Black Hear t, Clint Eastwood explodes his iconic Man With No Name. It’s an artfully wicked vengeance. Unforgiven is the most provocative western of Eastwood’s career, and with Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris along for the ride, it’s also the most potently acted. But Eastwood’s sixteenth film as a director is best understood as demythology. He’s had a hell of a time shaking the Terminator-on-horseback image he created in the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns of the Sixties, starting with A Fistful of Dollars. He came closest in 1976 by directing and starring in The Outlaw Josey Wales, about a brutal avenger who wins back his humanity. Now, in Unforgiven – which darkens and deepens the themes developed in Josey Wales – Eastwood dissects an aging outlaw’s struggle to make his redemption stick. The film is brutally comic in debunking the faux heroics that made Eastwood a star and also politically timely in showing how past sins can wreak havoc on the best intentions.

Looking creaky and weathered, Eastwood (he’s sixty-two) plays William Munny, a Kansas hog farmer, circa 1880, who gave up train robbing and murder eleven years ago to settle down with a good woman and raise two kids. Now the wife who reformed him is dead, and he needs cash to save the farm and keep his family from homelessness. A braggart called the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) dangles a tempting apple: A group of prostitutes in the town of Big Whiskey have offered a bounty of $500 each for the two cowboys who slashed and scarred pretty Delilah (Anna Thomson). Big Whiskey’s sheriff, Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman, in a seductive portrait of evil), let the cowboys off easy, making them pay six horses to the brothel owner to compensate for Delilah’s loss of market value. Outraged at the sexist insult, the hookers – led by Strawberry Alice (the excellent Frances Fisher) – pool their money in a prefeminist call for justice.

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Munny enlists a pal, retired gunman Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), to join him on the job. But another bounty hunter, English Bob (a wittily florid Richard Harris), accompanied by a sleazy journalist, W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek), beats them to town. Daggett, once a lawbreaker himself, puts a vicious end to Bob’s plans. That leaves Beauchamp to rely on Daggett for inspiration before Munny arrives for the day of reckoning.

The graying gunfighters of David Webb Peoples’s acutely observant script recall such classic films as John Ford’s Searchers, Howard Hawks’s El Dorado and Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country. But Eastwood, aided by Jack N. Green’s cinematography and Lennie Niehaus’s score, gives the material a singularly rugged and sorrowful beauty. Unforgiven is long (130 minutes) and given to interludes of philosophical musing, but it doesn’t ramble. Eastwood performs with absolute authority; it’s his most deeply felt performance since Tightrope. Munny has stopped using his outlaw muscles. He’s rusty with his gun, his horse and women. When Delilah offers a “free one,” Munny declines with gawky tact.

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It’s the killing that comes hardest. Munny’s clumsiness gets him wounded in action. Even Logan, an expert rifleman, bungles an ambush. Freeman’s sharply expressive performance indicates the character’s aversion to his brutal past. Eastwood, often accused of dodging the consequences of violence in his work, repeatedly shows the pain inflicted by even superficial wounds. In a horrifying scene, the panicky Kid shoots a man who is sitting on a toilet and tries to justify his action by saying the bastard had it coming. “We all have it coming, Kid,” says Munny. It sounds like a Dirty Harry “Make my day” line, but the words cut deep into Munny’s character. When Daggett forces his hand, Munny’s killer instinct overrides his conscience.

In a showdown with the sheriff and his deputies, Munny is transformed into his former self – killing with savage equanimity and balletic grace. He even looks younger and more assured. This is the Eastwood hero the audience once cheered. But Eastwood the filmmaker is no longer cheering. Beauchamp will live to celebrate the legend of William Munny, but no alert viewer will feel the same. Munny’s future, as revealed in a bitterly ironic coda, cleverly turns western tradition on its head. By weighing Munny’s rise to prosperity against his fall from grace, Eastwood gives Unforgiven a tragic stature that puts his own filmmaking past in critical and moral perspective. In three decades of climbing into the saddle, Eastwood has never ridden so tall.

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Unforgiven (1992) Ending Explained – Does this western have a happy ending?

Unforgiven Plot Synopsis

‘Unforgiven’ is a ground-breaking 1992 western movie, written by David Webb Peoples and directed, produced, and starring Academy Award Winner Clint Eastwood.

The movie is based on a former ruthless cowboy who seeks forgiveness while dealing with the villainous complexities of his life, aspects that were clouded by his unstoppable desire for power, aspiration, and voracious desire for vengeance.

Unforgiven centers on William Munny, an ex-gunfighter who accepts one final job decades after quitting and switching his profession to farming. A masterful piece of filmmaking skilfully hides his violent, mysterious past, giving his role an air of suspense and darkness.

Alongside the heinous crimes and inhumane acts he perpetrated as a young man, Eastwood’s stone-eyed, straight-faced demeanor allows us to sincerely empathize with his character as we enter the world of his tormented conscience.

William escapes the tyranny of remorse and residual flashbacks of his earlier years as he alienates himself from everything in his past. However, in one concluding act of brutality and chaos, he resurrects his former self and his spirit which was contaminated with resentment, remorse, misery, and despair.

The movie’s exceptional realism in depicting the West, as well as its rich and nuanced elements of the morally complex plot, may have piqued your interest in learning about the rather confusing ending of the movie. So, let’s dive a little deeper.

What served as the movie’s inspiration?

As per reports, the movie’s writer was inspired by Glendon Swarthout’s “The Shootist” which, in turn, was partially based on John Wesley Hardin’s story.

Clint Eastwood stated in an interview that he wanted to make a point with this movie, which is that the western imagery was built by characters who inflated the fantasy of the west. He intended to express his opinion on the romanticizing of violence and gunplay in the community. His feelings on these themes were given room to grow in this movie.

What background does Munny have?

When “Unforgiven” starts in 1880, Munny, as portrayed by Eastwood, seems to be an aged ex-assassin who is now a dutiful farmer helping to raise two children. Munny was a violent man decades ago who, as he says in the movie’s climactic scene, has killed just about everything that walks or crawls.

However, Munny reformed himself by giving up drinking and violence, along with having a family with the assistance of his deceased wife.

What causes the movie’s chaos to begin?

Unforgiven’s catalyst for this drama centers on a prostitute named Delilah Fitzgerald, who is scarred by two cowboys in Big Whiskey, Wyoming, which sets the plot of the movie in motion.

Following the incident, her brothel acquaintances put up a prize for whoever kills the cowboys, which infuriates sheriff Little Bill Daggett as he forbids vigilantism in his community.

When Munny’s ranch starts to crumble, he realizes that uncomplicated new beginnings and fairy tale endings do not happen in the Old West after all. Motivated by a desire to protect his children and to provide them with resources, he hesitantly persuades his friend Ned Logan, a fellow bandit, to work alongside him as well as an adolescent sharpshooter known as The Schofield Kid to earn a reward for the murders of two farmers who disfigured and traumatized Delilah Fitzgerald.

Two groups of gunfighters come to claim the prize; they tussle with each other and the sheriff. One group is led by elderly former bandit William Munny, another by the florid English Bob.

What causes the Schofield Kid to abandon his fantasy?

Once it’s time to take out Delilah’s perpetrators, Ned realizes he can no longer murder anybody, so Munny has to jump in and brutally murder a man. Munny as well as the Schofield Kid pursue their further objectives while Ned manages to escape. Sadly, it results in a man striking and gunning Ned down as he is hiding in an abandoned house.

The Schofield Kid confesses to Munny that he had never shot anybody before that night and gives up the sharpshooter life after the two earn their prize because it’s a terrifying reality in comparison to whatever illusion he may have envisioned.

Does Munny manage to kill Bill?

The fact that Little Bill discovered his identity upon capturing and tormenting Ned to death eliminates Munny’s choice of running away. In order to calm his nerves before the necessary action, he also consumes liquor for the very first time since his spouse’s passing.

The final confrontation between Munny and Little Bill is far from an honorable conflict. Conversely, he attacks Little Bill as well as his squad in the dead of night as they get ready to track and kill him and The Schofield Kid in the early hours.

After having taken out Little Bill’s squad and injuring Bill, Munny coolly shoots the parlor’s disarmed owner. Little Bill protests that he does not really deserve this demeaning fate, but Munny sneers, “Deserve has got nothing to do with it”.

What makes this movie stand out?

There is substance to the movie. Every character in the movie, including the antagonist, has a perspective. Despite the fact that he is wrong, the antagonist believes that he is righteous and taking the right decisions.

Every character in the movie, including the supporting ones, have a point of view. The movie’s protagonist is not the stereotypical “good character”; rather, he has moral ambiguity and is multifaceted, which gives the movie a more genuine sense and it makes it more relatable to the audience.

What is the movie’s central theme?

Even though Munny succeeds in collecting the money he needs to support his two children, it comes at a high personal cost which is the nasty side of his personality which he had hidden and has now come to the forefront. He is once more a brutal killer who enjoys drinking hard liquor, and will undoubtedly be troubled by the images of his latest victims.

The last remnants of Munny’s “good” self were ultimately destroyed by Ned’s passing even though he had been pardoned by his wife, society, and most importantly by himself. However, the temptation of his old ways is too alluring and he relapses into the violent world that he had left behind. Towards the end, he comes to terms with the fact that he is – and has always been – unforgiving.

All of the main characters have forgiveness as a recurring theme. After Bill punishes the cowboys, the women are unwilling to pardon them, Bill is unable to forgive English Bob’s past. Moreover, when the young boy murders the cowboy, he instantly asks for forgiveness.

Does the movie have a happy ending?

The revisionist western movie is not just about its plot, whether William Munny collects the reward, and about who is killed during the movie; rather, it is primarily about what it means to kill someone and how a society is altered when individuals are killed.

In a devastating tale, it exposes the futility of a life dedicated to violence. The movie makes the case that the Wild West was an unfair environment where those who survived gunfights weren’t necessarily good or even skilled shooters but were the ones who could maintain calm.

Although Unforgiven wasn’t the first western to do so, it did aim to lessen the romanticized portrayal of American history that the western genre is known to portray.

Even after Munny delivers his famous phrase in “Unforgiven,” the movie doesn’t mince words in illustrating its point. Little Bill responds, “I’ll see you in Hell, William Munny”, to which Munny merely snarls, “Yeah”, before shooting him dead and fleeing the area, threatening the residents that he will come back to murder them if they fail to give Ned a decent funeral or injure any sex workers once more.

Following this, he disappears into the chilly, rainy night, resembling a ghost rather than a justifiable warrior whose actions had helped everyone but himself.

Following this, the movie’s epilogue ends with a somber image of Munny standing next to his wife’s grave. Additionally, despite the on-screen text mentioning reports that Munny eventually thrived in dry goods, everything about this sequence suggests that, like the wild west legends, this gleam of a “happy ending” is undoubtedly a lie.

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2 thoughts on “unforgiven (1992) ending explained – does this western have a happy ending”.

P.S. “Happy endings are just stories that haven’t finished yet.”

Are we sure we even saw the movie, Sarah? You get a number of plot details completely wrong (i.e., Munny shoots the barkeep dead first and foremost for “decorating his saloon with my friend’s (Ned’s) body”. (To wit: The open coffin perched by front door with a sign reading, “This what we do to assassins”). Ned himself was beaten to death by Little Bill (LB) in his jail cell to extract the names of his cohorts, not gunned down in an abandoned house. After killing the “parlor owner”, Will experiences a misfire in the second barrel of his side-by-side shotgun, throws it at LB and pulls The Kid’s Scholfield and guns down the posse members who failed to flee and then — stooped like some vengeful demon over the bar drinking abandoned shots of liquor — turns and finishes off LB with Ned’s Spencer rifle. “I’ve always been lucky when it comes to killing folks.”

Especially when intoxicated…

We all bring our own experiences and sentiments into the emotions of an excellent movie, like “Unforgiven”. For me, Will’s relationship with alcohol was eerily similar, just not with violence. Some people have a drink or two, get sloppy and fall asleep, wherever. But there is another breed that don’t know where the end of the bottle is and get *sharper*, as they become intoxicated beyond the limits of other humans. We’re commonly referred to as ‘alcoholics’. In the movie, I saw Will as the very image of myself, pre- and post-abstinence.

With an abusive amount of alcohol, my senses and reactions to my environment became hypersensitive. I was the lead singer in Rock bands in my late teens through late 20’s, and my tagline, “Nobody outdrinks the band”, made patrons and owners alike frenetic, euphoric and delirious. But, that ‘sharpness’ cuts everything it touches, even those we love…

Without alcohol, I am lessened in all these ways. As Will was, evidenced by his horrible attempts at agriculture and animal husbandry. He can’t even mount his pale, “flea-bitten”/pestilent white horse (Death symbolism), when sober. He found a woman to love and be loved by, as I did, and fathered and raised children as best he could being thus broken, as I have.

But the news of Ned’s brutalization, torture and murder by LB caused him to reinvite ‘Demon Alcohol’ to repossess his body and to once again become, “…murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition…” and put an end to the monstrous LB (the movie’s representation of the dark side of law enforcement, an ongoing problem today), for “what you did to Ned”, his friend, a Black man… He downs 2/3 of a quart of rotgut on the ride into Big Whiskey alone and exacts the vengeance Ned has earned and LB is due: “We all got it coming.” (NB: No more problems with submission from his Death’s horse, either, for the remainder of the movie. It knows Its master.)

So, I — and I daresay many others similarly afflicted — could only see this as a movie depicting alcoholism to a tee. The good, the bad and the ugly (pun intended).

You obviously experienced it differently, and many others may have been inclined toward confusion over the events and motivations of William Munny. For those of us who understand the dichotomy of alcoholism, its visceral thrills and emotional agony, no such confusion exists.

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The Unforgivable Parent Guide

It's almost impossible to review this film because the story turns on a major plot twist..

In Theaters: After serving her time, Ruth re-enters society, determined to find her sister. But society isn't willing to let bygones be bygones...(This Netflix release will stream on December 10th.)

Release date November 24, 2021

Run Time: 112 minutes

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by kirsten hawkes.

Having served her 20 year sentence, Ruth Slater walks out of prison to a harsh new reality. Her halfway house is violent and rundown; she’s having trouble finding work; and her parole officer treats her with ill-concealed disdain. But her biggest challenge is personal. When Ruth was incarcerated, Katie, the little sister she had raised since birth was put into care, effectively disappearing from Ruth’s life. Her top priority is to find out what happened to Katie but the adoption system is a black box and Ruth has no easy way of finding her beloved sister.

What Ruth doesn’t know is that someone else’s goals are about to impact her life. Two young men have spent twenty years living with the results of Ruth’s crime. Now that she’s out of prison, the brothers determine that it’s time for revenge…

What does work in the film is Sandra Bullock’s performance. She delivers a raw, gut-wrenching performance that is totally believable. Ruth is tough, courageous, and wholly dedicated to her little sister. She projects a world-weary pragmatism; a willingness to do what she must to make it through each day. This is clearly a star vehicle for Ms. Bullock, but the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to her performance, which will hurt her chances in awards season.

In addition to the film’s plot challenges, it also carries a fair bit of negative content. It’s not a surprise, given the milieu Ruth lives in, but there’s a fair bit of profanity, including 27 sexual expletives. There are also repeated flashbacks to a violent crime, and other crimes including a kidnapping, and a scene where a gun is pointed at two women.

Unforgivable has potential but is ultimately disappointing. It’s not terrible but it’s not as good as it could have been. Sadly, it’s not unforgettable; this is one of those movies that will gradually disappear from your memory, leaving little behind – except for an increased respect for Sandra Bullock’s acting skills.

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Kirsten hawkes, watch the trailer for the unforgivable.

The Unforgivable Rating & Content Info

Why is The Unforgivable rated R? The Unforgivable is rated R by the MPAA Rated R for language and violence

Violence: A car accident is briefly seen. People use knives to cut up fish. A person punches and throws someone for attempted theft. A man punches and kicks another man. A person throws equipment through drywall and wrecks a room. A woman pushes another one into a wall in an argument. There is mention of suicide and murder. A police officer is shot. His bloody body is seen. A person is kidnapped. A man points a gun at two women. Sexual Content: A woman is seen from the shoulders up in a shower. A married woman is seen in bed with another man; her bare back is visible. Profanity: The film contains over three dozen profanities, including at least 27 sexual expletives, nine scatological curses, three terms of deity, and two anatomical curse words. There are also several crude terms for women and a coarse term for male genitalia. Alcohol / Drug Use: A man is seen smoking cigarettes. People drink alcohol at a party. A woman removes a tourniquet from her arm; drug use is implied but not seen.

Page last updated March 30, 2023

The Unforgivable Parents' Guide

What do you think about the choices Ruth made? What could she have done differently? What would have been the likely consequences? What would you have done in her situation?

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• Warner Bros. Pictures

Summary In this Academy Award winning western, Eastwood and Freeman are down-on-their-luck outlaws who pick up their guns one last time in order to collect a bounty offered by the vengeful prostitutes of remote Big Whiskey, Wyoming.

Directed By : Clint Eastwood

Written By : David Webb Peoples

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Unforgiven Reviews

It’s stunning cinematography by Jack N. Green is breathtaking, with the brilliant use of wide-shots and placing characters in the foreground in order to capture the epic scale and power of the wide-screen.

Full Review | Jul 31, 2024

A better modern western has yet to be made.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 12, 2024

... it finally made official what critics and fans had slowly come to realize over the last decade: Clint Eastwood—legendary as both the iconic western drifter with no name and Dirty Harry—was one of America’s best directors.

Full Review | Nov 18, 2023

David Webb Peoples’ screenplay skillfully balances the seasoned perspective on the ramifications of violence with the compelling journey of a young gunslinger determined to make a name for himself.

Full Review | Jun 14, 2023

It is arguably his [Eastwood] finest achievement, it is certainly his apex as an actor.

Full Review | Dec 7, 2022

"They had it coming."

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 8, 2022

As great as the script and cinematography are (they are both unassailable), the real magic of Unforgiven is in the performances.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Apr 17, 2022

By embracing the uncertainty behind Munny, the Old West, and American myths, Eastwood elevates a simple story by transcending the genre itself, and transforming his film into great art with the dynamic and compassion that has become his signature.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 2, 2022

An astoundingly powerful tale of a strangely anti-Old West, multilayered outlaw, this film is one of the finest revisionist epics ever brought to the big screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Sep 25, 2020

Unforgiven thus rejects Eastwood's previous filmography and the patriotic speeches of many other filmmakers involved with the western. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 8, 2020

Arguably the last of the great movie westerns... The real star of the show here is Gene Hackman, playing the psychotic town sheriff who stands in the way of the trio's bounty.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 15, 2020

[Eastwood's] best Western -- the most distinguised film he has appeared in and directed -- since The Outlaw Josey Wales.

Full Review | Feb 6, 2020

Eloquent and expansive, Unforgiven is arguably the best film of Eastwood's career-a movie that could well serve as the last word on the western.

Clint Eastwood's brilliant and harrowing Unforgiven packs all the punch of a good Western without indulging in the plot cliches and moral certitudes so often inherent in the genre.

Full Review | Feb 5, 2020

Apart from giving the Western genre a powerful boost Unforgiven does wonders for Eastwood's own profile.

With its unflinching depictions of brutalities, Eastwood's new western calls to mind the work of Sam Peckinpah. But Eastwood's cadences are slow, his antiheros rueful, his atmosphere murky and chilling.

Full Review | Feb 21, 2019

The film has a kind of wise knowingness which may well mislead some people into thinking that its main aim is to debunk the western.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2018

Unforgiven gives us something to think about -- and something to answer for -- and Eastwood was just the man to make it.

Full Review | Apr 26, 2018

[Clint] Eastwood reinvents the western. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Mar 2, 2018

Impressive, laconic, revisionist western.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 1, 2018