In 2004,Unforgiven was selected for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registry by theLibrary of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[7] The film was remade into a 2013 Japanese film, also titledUnforgiven, which starsKen Watanabe and changes the setting to the earlyMeiji era in Japan. Eastwood has long asserted that the film would be his last traditional Western, concerned that any future projects would simply rehash previous plotlines or imitate someone else's work.[8]
In 1880, in Big Whiskey,Wyoming, a cowboy named Quick Mike slashes prostitute Delilah Fitzgerald's face with a knife, permanently disfiguring her after she laughs at his small penis. As punishment,Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett orders Mike and his associate who was with him at the brothel, Davey Bunting, to turn over several of their ponies to Delilah's employer, Skinny DuBois, for his loss of revenue. Outraged, the prostitutes offer a $1,000bounty for the cowboys' deaths.
InHodgeman County,Kansas, a boastful young man visits Will Munny's hog farm. He calls himself the "Schofield Kid" and claims to be an experienced bounty hunter looking for help pursuing the cowboys. Formerly a notorious outlaw and murderer, Will is now a repentant widower raising two children. After initially refusing to help, Will realizes that his farm is failing and his children's future is in jeopardy. He recruits his friend Ned Logan, another retired outlaw, and they catch up with the Kid, whom they discover, is severelynear-sighted.
Back in Big Whiskey, British-borngunfighter "English" Bob, an old acquaintance and rival of Little Bill's, seeks the bounty. He arrives in town with his biographer W. W. Beauchamp, who naively believes Bob's tall tales. Enforcing the town's antigun law, Little Bill, with his deputies, disarms Bob and beats him savagely to discourage others from attempting to claim the bounty. Bob, humiliated, is banished from town the next morning, but Beauchamp stays out of a fascination with the sheriff, who debunks many of the romantic notions Beauchamp has about theWild West. Little Bill explains to Beauchamp that the best attribute for a gunslinger is to be cool-headed under fire rather than to have the quickest draw, and to always kill the best shooter first.
Will, Ned, and the Kid arrive in town during a rainstorm and enter Skinny's saloon. While Ned and the Kid meet with the prostitutes upstairs, Little Bill confronts a feverish Will. Not realizing Will's identity, but correctly guessing that he wants the bounty, Bill confiscates hispistol and beats him. Ned and the Kid escape through a back window and take Will to an unoccupied barn outside of town, where they and the prostitutes nurse him back to health. A few days later, the trio ambush Davey. After missing Davey and shooting his horse, Ned falters and Will shoots Davey instead. Ned decides to quit and return to Kansas.
Ned is later captured and flogged to death by Little Bill to learn the whereabouts of Will and the Kid. Will takes the Kid with him to the cowboys' ranch, directing him to ambush Quick Mike in theouthouse and shoot him. After they escape, a distraught Kid drunkenly confesses he had never killed anyone before and is overcome with remorse. A prostitute arrives with the reward and tells them about Ned's fate. Shocked by the news, Will begins drinking and demands the Kid'srevolver. The Kid hands it over, saying that he no longer wants to be a killer, and Will sends him back to Kansas to distribute the reward.
That night, Will finds Ned's corpse displayed in a coffin outside Skinny's saloon. Inside, Little Bill and his deputies are organizing aposse. Will walks in alone, brandishing a shotgun, and kills Skinny for displaying Ned's corpse. He then aims at Little Bill, but the shotgun misfires. In the ensuing gunfight, Will shoots Little Bill and several other members of the posse with the revolver. He then orders the rest of the men out. Beauchamp lingers briefly to ask how Will survived. Will replies that it was luck, and that he was always lucky when it came to killing people. Beauchamp presses Will for more information, but Will threatens to kill him, scaring him away. Little Bill tries and fails to take another shot at Will while lying on the floor, then bemoans his fate and curses Will, who shoots him dead. Will shouts threats to the townsmen to bury Ned's body properly and to not harm prostitutes, or he will come back and kill everyone, as he mounts his horse and rides out of town.
A closing title card states that Will's mother-in-law found her daughter's grave and the farm abandoned years later, Will having possibly moved to San Francisco with the children and prospered in dry goods. She remained at a loss to understand why her daughter married such a notorious outlaw and murderer.
The film was written byDavid Webb Peoples, who had written the Oscar-nominated filmThe Day After Trinity and co-writtenBlade Runner withHampton Fancher.[9] The concept for the film dated to 1976, when it was developed under the titlesThe Cut-Whore Killings andThe William Munny Killings.[9] The script was originally optioned byFrancis Ford Coppola, who failed to raise the money to develop the project any further.[10][11]
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".[12] In 1984, Sonia Chernus, Eastwood's long time story editor at Malpaso Productions, sent him a scathing memo after reading the script stating that "it doesn't deserve my time or yours" and is "an insult to this company" and that Eastwood should "get rid of it FAST".[13][14]
Eastwood personally phoned Harris to offer him the role of English Bob, and later said Harris was watching Eastwood's movieHigh Plains Drifter at the time of the phone call, leading to Harris thinking it was a prank.[15]
Gene Hackman was hesitant to play Bill Daggett, as his daughters were upset that he was starring in too many violent films, but his agent and Eastwood convinced him to do it.[16][17]
Filming took place between August 26, 1991, and November 12, 1991.[18] Much of the film was shot inAlberta in August 1991 by director of photographyJack Green.[19] Production designerHenry Bumstead, who had worked with Eastwood onHigh Plains Drifter, was hired to create the "drained, wintry look" of the Western.[19] The railroad scenes were filmed on theSierra Railroad inTuolumne County, California.[20]
Like otherrevisionist Westerns,Unforgiven is primarily concerned with deconstructing the morally black-and-white vision of the American West, which was established by traditional works in the genre, as the script is saturated with unnerving reminders of the now teetotaling Munny's own horrific past as a drunken murderer and gunfighter, who is haunted by the lives he has taken,[3] while the film as a whole "reflects a reverse image of classical Western tropes"; the protagonists, rather than avenging a God-fearing innocent, are hired to collect a bounty offered by a group of prostitutes. Men who claim to be fearless killers are variously exposed as being either cowards, weaklings, or self-promoting liars, while others find that they no longer have it in them to take yet another life. A writer with no concept of the harshness and cruelty of frontier life publishes stories which glorify common criminals as infallible men of honor. The law is represented by a pitiless and cynical former gun-slinger whose idea of justice is often swift and without mercy, and while the main protagonist initially tries to resist his own violent impulses, the murder of his old friend drives him to become the same cold-blooded killer he once was, suggesting that a Western hero is not necessarily "the good guy", but is instead "just the one who survived".[21][self-published source?]
Film scholar Allen Redmon describes Munny's role as an antihero by stating he is "a virtuous or an injured hero [who] overcomes all obstacles to see that evil is eradicated, using whatever means necessary".[22]
Critic Sven Mikulec called the film Eastwood's "eulogy to theMan with No Name character that made him immortal."[23]
Unforgiven shares many parallels withHomer'sIliad, in characters and themes. "In both works, the protagonists – Achilles and William Munny – are self-questioning warriors who temporarily reject the culture of violence, only to return to it after the death of their closest male friend, in which they are implicated."[24] Munny and Achilles have the same dilemma between fate and counter-fate. They know that their fate is being a warrior and likely dying that way; however, they both try to reject it for at least some time. Munny continually claims he has changed and "ain't like that no more", referring to his warrior-like hitman past, whereas Achilles continually refuses to be a soldier in the Greek army since he condemns Agamemnon for stealing his captured bride as war spoil.
Neither wants to kill for causes from their past (Munny being an outlaw, Achilles being a warrior-king) since they find them unjust. Both are committed to a "higher" cause—Munny to his children and his wife's wishes, and Achilles to the injustice of women-stealing and to Briseis, who at one point he would have had to sacrifice to Agamemnon to stop the war.
When their best friends are killed—Achilles' Patroclus and Munny's Ned—they allow their rage and desire for vengeance, though, to make them return to their warrior-prescribed fate. Achilles rages against the Trojans and kills many. He gets vengeance by killing Hector and desecrating his corpse, dragging it around the town. Munny rages against Little Bill and his crew. He gets vengeance by killing Little Bill and them, threatening to kill anyone who opposes him.
Relevant differences are seen, though, between Homer's epic and Eastwood's film, namely that Achilles is fated to die in battle, whereas Munny moves to California at the end of the film to become a businessman to provide for his children. Whether Munny has successfully countered his warrior-fate is unclear, as is whether a life in dry goods redeems him as his love for his wife had done.
The film debuted at the top position in its opening weekend.[25][26] Its earnings of $15 million ($7,252 average from 2,071 theaters) in its opening weekend was the best-ever opening for a Clint Eastwood film at that time.[27] This was also the highest August opening weekend, holding that record until it was surpassed a year later byThe Fugitive.[28] It spent a total of three weeks as the number-one film in North America. In its 35th weekend (April 2–4, 1993), capitalizing on its Oscar wins, the film returned to the top 10 (spending another three weeks total there), ranking at number eight with a gross of $2.5 million ($2,969 average from 855 theaters), an improvement of 197% over the weekend before, when it made $855,188 ($1,767 average from 484 theaters). The film closed on July 15, 1993, having spent nearly a full year in theaters (343 days / 49 weeks), having earned $101.2 million in North America, and another $58 million internationally for a total of $159.2 million worldwide.[29]
Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 96% based on 109 reviews, and an average rating of 8.80/10. 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."[30]Metacritic gave the film a score of 85 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[31] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[32]
Jack Methews of theLos Angeles Times describedUnforgiven as "the finest classical Western to come along since perhapsJohn Ford's 1956The Searchers."Richard Corliss inTime 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."[27]Gene Siskel andRoger Ebert criticized the work, though the latter gave it a positive vote, for being too long and having too many superfluous characters (such as Harris' English Bob, who enters and leaves without meeting the protagonists). Despite his initial reservations, Ebert eventually included the film in his "The Great Movies" list.[33]
Unforgiven was named one of the 10 best films of the year on 76 critics' lists, according to a poll of the nation's top 106 film critics.[34]
The music for theUnforgiven film trailer, which appeared in theaters 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.[54]
In 2013, theWriters Guild of America ranked Peoples' script forUnforgiven as the 30th-greatest ever written.[55]
Unforgiven was released as premium home video, on DVD andVHS, on September 24, 2002.[56] It was released onBlu-ray Book (a Blu-ray Disc with book packaging) on February 21, 2012. Special features include an audio commentary by Clint Eastwood biographer Richard Schickel; four documentaries including "All on Accounta Pullin' a Trigger", "Eastwood & Co.: MakingUnforgiven", "Eastwood...A Star", and "Eastwood on Eastwood", and more.[57]Unforgiven was released on 4K UHD Blu-ray on May 16, 2017.[58]
A Japanese adaptation ofUnforgiven, directed byLee Sang-il and starringKen Watanabe, was released in 2013. The plot of the 2013 version is very similar to the original, but it takes place in Japan during theMeiji period, with the main character being asamurai instead of a bandit.
Beard, William (2000)."Unforgiven: Anatomy of a Murderer".Persistence of Double Vision: Essays on Clint Eastwood. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Archived fromthe original on April 11, 2009.
