#98. Unforgiven (1992)

This movie ended exactly the way I wanted it to end, everything that I said I hoped would happen within the first half hour happened, yet this was one of the most unsatisfying movies I have ever seen.

As a general rule, I don't care much for westerns, the "Young Guns" films and "The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" being very rare exceptions. However I am also biologically a man, and seeing the right people get shot in the right circumstances will always excite me. After reading a synopsis of "Unforgiven" it awakened the same carnal emotions in me that get me all fired up whenever I watch "The Punisher" (Thomas Jane, not Dolph Lundgren). Two hours and ten minutes later I was wishing I had been watching the Dolph Lundgren "Punisher" instead...

There are so many things wrong with "Unforgiven" that I don't even know how to list them, in order of priority, chronologically or just as I think of them, so prepare for a tirade as sloppy and disjointed as "Unforgiven" itself.

First of all, I really resent a lot of the praise this movie receives based on the notion that Clint Eastwood's character Will Munny is uniquely original because of his "anti-hero" status. Which wouldn't have been an issue had this character not been preceded by characters like Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane), Han Solo (Star Wars) or for that matter, Dirty Harry. Which brings me to the topic of typecasting.

I would have thought Clint Eastwood has turned out a remarkable performance if the part had been played by Terrance Stamp or Paul Newman, someone who doesn't historically play a reluctant hero with a dark past, however he simply played Clint Eastwood, complete with the gruff disconnection from other characters. More disappointing though was the completely poor usage of one of Hollywood's greatest talents, Morgan Freeman, who also falls victim to some period type-casting, as he found himself cast in the "humble sidekick" role several times during this point in his carrer ("Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" and he even had to be the Yin to Jessica F'ing Tandy's Yang in "Driving Miss Daisy" (awesome movie btw).

All that aside, I feel there are a lot of flaws with the plot itself. First off, there needs to be some back-story. Why would Munny's deceased wife see fit to reform a man who admittedly used to kill women and children? Was she a missionary? Did she see him in a way nobody else did? Love at first sight? Did he save her life? How did people from such diverse backgrounds even cross paths? Without this key information we have to assume that nothing more than a desire to change that made Will Munny reform his ways, which is simply not believable.

Secondly, while I love the fact that they depict a friendship between a black man and a white man in the era soon after the Civil War, I find it unbelievable that Ned's race is never brought up. I wasn't alive at the time, but the notion that a black man was allowed to patronize a white brothel is hard to, um, swallow... ;) The other complaint I have with the depiction of a bi-racial friendship is the routine stand up comedians and BET shows have been pointing out to us for years, how come the brotha always has to be the one in the group to get killed?

I don't mind long movies- I love long movies. What I don't like is feeling like I am having my time wasted. The character of English Bob was given quite a bit of screen time and in many ways more character development than the major characters, which would have been fine if they would have used him more. He is a relatively entertaining eccentric with a fascinating backstory who is built up only to be discarded mid-movie and never seen again. On top of that, the Gene Hackman Sheriff is such a shady scumbag that there is no good reason we should believe the insight he gives us into English Bob's character.

Now, the last of my BIG nitpicks is the biggest one and I think the one that made the difference between if I would like this movie or not. Yes, all the characters that I wanted to see die were killed, it just wasn't good enough for me. The cowboy who disfigured Delilah the Sweet Hooker (no this is not her name in the credits) is killed instantly with three shots to the chest. I get no satisfaction from this. Sure it is humiliating to die on the crapper at the hands of a blind kid, but there is also a certain level of shame in killing a man that way. He needed to be made to suffer much more than he did. He needed to be castrated, tortured or carved up with a spur, then killed. I get a little solace in knowing the gut-shot his partner sustained probably led to a slow and painful death, but again, it wasn't 10% of what he deserved.

The death of Gene Hackman's character was also about as gratifying as an 8-second handjob. He spends the whole movie bragging about his shoddy carpenter skills and talking up the house he is building- to not have the last thing he sees before he is killed is his house ablaze makes me wonder why they even bothered. As he is walking out of the saloon at the end of the climactic gunfight, Munny shoots a still-alive Deputy in the nuts at close range with a shotgun. HELLO, YOU HAVE AN ANTAGONIST WHO HARMED A SEX WORKER!!!!! Why was he not on the other end of this exchange?? That is Cinema 101 shit. Even better if one of the prostitutes had done it instead considering they are ridiculed and maligned by nearly everyone in the whole movie and never get any real retribution.

"He should have armed himself if he's going to decorate his saloon with my friend" (William Munny, "Unforgiven")

The abrupt ending also took me aback quite a bit. What happens to a town where the sheriff and the whole police force have been killed? What happens to the saloon/brothel once the owner is killed? Are the prostitutes going to unionize? What happens to The Schofield Kid? Ned's widow? Does Delilah finally attain some level of happiness? Why don't they tell us exactly what Munny did in his past? I know there are people out there who would say there is a certain artistry in keeping us in the dark so we can draw our own conclusions or because life doesn't always go how it should, but it's hard to draw conclusions about people we know so little about. The only place where this directorial tool is TRULY successful is the end synopsis where Munny's widow's mother is left to wonder what her daughter ever saw in him. As a viewer I just felt screwed.

When having our customary post-movie wrap-up discussion, my wife Lisa used an expression to describe this film that really stuck with me: Lazy Filmmaking. The lack of character development, the holes in the narrative, the jumping around from sub-plot to sub-plot, the numerous loose-ends left at the end- everything about this movie just felt thrown together. I have often heard this movie described as an "anti-western" or the antithesis of the John Wayne era, and other than the fact that the protagonist wasn't a sugar-coated hero, the only difference between this and the other few westerns I have seen is the fact that, instead of a sunset, Munny rides off into a storm... oooooooh dramatic!!!

One more thing: Does Munny seriously leave an 8-year-old boy in charge of the family farm?!?! WTF?