Unforgiven

Rating:
Summary: Oh NO, not another HORRIBLE WESTERN
Review: Unforgiven is an appropriate title for this mess, only it's Eastwood who should be UNFORGIVEN for turning out such a ghastly production. Clint, you've done MUCH BETTER.("Outlaw Josey Wales" for one) But either star in or direct, don't do both! Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman were the only saving graces here and to be blunt, Freeman did the better job. He reminded me somewhat of the character "Grave Digger" from "Glory" in that he didn't have the advantage of a great deal of "book learning" but he was WISER than most. The idea of a worn out gunfighter forced to return to his "trade" has been done plenty of times and it HAS worked, but I've said it before, I'll say it again, Hollywood can't make a decent Western anymore.

Rating:
Summary: Clint's Done Better
Review: Clint's done better. For example, "High Plains Drifter" was a far cry better. At least there was a hero in HPD; in "Unforgiven" this anti-hero stuff just leaves you kind of bummed out. I understand the movie's message but it just doesn't work for holding my interest. Gimme a good guy and let's just forget the depressing gray area. Believe it or not, there really are such things as distinguishable good and evil, unlike what this movie would have you believe.
This movie is rather slow at times too.
That they gave this movie best picture had more to do with throwing Clint a lifetime achievement bone--and the fact that it was up against weak competition that year--than it did any real merit of this movie.
By the way, I would've given this movie 3 stars were it not for the groupthinked, ridiculously hyperbolic 5 starred reviews on here.

Rating:
Summary: Even the unforgivens could get their souls saved.
Review: First of all, I beg you all readers forgiveness if my usage of Christian terms are inadequate since I am not Christian.
I am an animist as a Japanese, and believe in the existence of souls. So, I would say following notion is my version of amalgamation of all religious thoughts.

With this remarkable film, Clint Eastwood made me think deeply about people (including myself) who have sins and are self-conscious of it, and about their lives they carry on with a burden named "guilt".

If you have a sin that is unforgiven, and when you are conscious of it, your life becomes a hell.
You feel stained forever. That awareness suffers you.
But, you have to know that you are lucky to be conscious of your sins. That means, you have a chance to save your soul, to wash the stain out by yourself. At least, you can try it. That is all our lives about, I think.

William Munny, once a cold-blooded murderer, becomes conscious of his stains on his soul when he married to his late wife and she gave Munny a chance to gain a humble decency as a human.
Having lost his caring wife, Munny leads difficult life with two children and poverty. But bearing this struggle is a duty to Munny to expiate his sin, or just to show his late wife he is not giving up his acquired decency.

Munny's last job as a gunman, for the sake of his children, is to take revenge for a prostitute who was assaulted by two men but rejected to bring them to justice. Here, we see a typical example of injustice by the justice side in reality.
Who judges who? Who can forgive someone else's sin? Nobody. Still, I would like to forgive Munny if I were in the position to make the decision. I believe Munny's wife would have felt the same.

Even if the sins commited by humans never be forgiven by humans, they are always given a chance to expiate it.
Humans always make mistakes. Sometimes commit sins. As a sinner myself, I cannot say that they all should be forgiven, but I believe that carrying a burden of guilty on up the steep hill towards a brighter place, however dim it seems first, is what every person with sin should do to save their souls by themselves.
I say this again, but it is our lives meant that we keep moving upwards to make ourselves better. To make our world better place. However it seems hard.
The good news is, the stain doesn't last forever. Because souls are the light itself. It can't be stained, after all.

Rating:
Summary: woah
Review: Unforgiven is a chilling powerfull movie that will leave impressions on you. i bought this expecting an ass-kicking fest from clint eastwood. boy was i wrong. those of you familiar with anime can definately link this with ruoni kenshin. eastwood plays an ex-super killer turned family man. but with the passing of his wife, there is no longer anything holding him back from what he used to be. i wont spoil anything for you, but i'll say that the ending is really surprising. the acting is good from everyone, and the directing is great also. as for the special features, oohh boy is there a lot to be had. several documentaries, commentaries, and even an episode of an old west show called Maverick which eastwood is in (sheesh does he look young!). if you are looking for a Dirty Harry-esque cool fest from eastwood, you will be dissappointed. however if you are looking for a western Taxi Driver, this is what you want.

Rating:
Summary: Too Dark
Review: Technically, this is a first-rate movie with superb acting. The violence was a little much for me, however. It is true that all of Eastwood's westerns contain a lot of violence, but in this movie, the violence IS the story, and the story is consumed by it. Also, in his earlier westerns, there was generally a clear distinction between the "good guys" and the "bad guys", and you were almost glad to see the villains get smoked. In this movie, there is no such distinction, and that makes the brutality rather senseless.

Rating:
Summary: Unforgiven - The Way it Really Happened?
Review: After watching the western movie titled: "Unforgiven", it reminded me of a trip my brother and I made out to Nevada, to a place called Pioche. During the late 1800's, They say Pioche was one of the most ruthless towns in the West. It was a busy mining town and a war zone. If you visited, you ran the chance of being harassed or even killed. Murder wasn't uncommon in Pioche, Nevada. It was also common in many other colonial frontier settlements at the time. In my opinion, this was the true history of America's expansion into the West while drunk in corruption. The movie Unforgiven, will satisfy this assumption; It will testify about everything. There's no Hollywood glamour, or fake stereotypes in this movie. You will see things up close and personal. You will see the disease that plagued the territory. This often must have been the true lifestyle during America's westward expansion; or the prime of it's Manifest Destiny.

This movie is directed by Clint Eastwood, and he's also the main character. Unforgiven is highly disturbing, and hard to understand.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome Masterwork
Review: Probably one of the coolest westerns to date is still one of the finest ever made. I really don't seem to follow some of those older westerns. The ones where 2 people duel over the revenge of someone. Anyways, this movie is entertaining and pretty well done.

Clint Eastwood is pretty cool. At the beginning he doesn't get to do much, but later he gets to shoot some guys. Gene Hackman isn't too bad of a guy, and he does a great job of being vengeful yet calm. Morgan Freeman does a great job of backing Clint up, but Clint Eastwood is still the star. Also, English Bob was a great character, but he was mostly there to show you what Gene Hackman(Dagget) is really like.

As for the movie itself? You can look up the synopsis anywhere, but the movie is great. It keeps you there with great visuals and great acting/characters.

Rating:
Summary: One of Eastwood's best films as director and star
Review: Redemption can only succeed if the past doesn't haunt the redeemed. Clint Eastwood stars as former outlaw Will Munny. Munny has changed his ways after meeting a woman who literally helped him turn his life around. Now she's gone and he's a struggling farmer with two small children desperate for money to fuel his last chance at staying honest and straight.

Munny decides along with his former partner (a marvelously understated Morgan Freeman)and a young kid to kill two cowboys that cut up a prostitute for a $1000.00 bounty. The only thing standing between him and the money is Little Bill (Gene Hackman who picked up an Oscar for Best Supporting actor)a brutal Sheriff. Munny doesn't know it but he's caught an express train to hell as the cold blooded killer he was comes to the fore again.

Unforgiven is as much about the inability to escape our past as it is about the violence and bloodshed that was later glossed over in the westerns of the 30's and 40's. Munny realizes that killing is a nasty business for both the killer and his victim. Despite his years of hard work and the saving grace of his wife, Munny could easily tip over into the abyss of alcholism and cruelty that dominated his youth. It's a marvelous portrayal and Eastwood, arguably, deserved the Best Acting Oscar as much as the directing and Best Picture Oscars.

This new 10th Anniversary edition has been digitally remastered and looks beautiful. The opening sequence is a good example of the care taken in the transfer. The smoke from Munny's house during sunset snakes gently against the bright orange sky. Eastwood and his collaborators (writer David Webb Peoples who also wrote Blade Runner and the underrated film science fiction adventure Solider with Kurt Russell)have fashioned a morality play as much about the present as it is about the past.

The cast is filled with Eastwood regulars but two particular performances shine aside from Eastwood and Freeman--Gene Hackman as the sadistic and brutal Little Bill and the late Richard Harris in a glorified cameo as gunfighting legend English Bob. Harris plays Bob as a dandy with a pistol until Bob encounters Little Bill. We then discover how much of his legend is myth designed to gloss over a nasty reputation and dishonorable actions.

The extras included are very good as well. There's a documentary called Eastwood on Eastwood which ran on one of the cable channels. As a performer we get glimpses of Eastwood in early supporting roles (from his first movie the horrible horror film Revenge of the Creature with John Agar)to the television role that gave him enough fame to jump to Leone's A Fistful of Dollars in Rawhide. The clips provide a good summation of Eastwood's performing style over the years. It's also a canny if slightly self serving assessment on Eastwood's themes as a director and smart observations about the true quality of his uneven body of work as a director.

There's also an episode of Maverick featuring James Garner where Eastwood plays a character that could have been Munny when he was younger. He plays a cocky young gunfighter with an attitude (although Munny was much nastier based on comments from the characters in the film. Consider his portrayal a G rated version of Munny). It's a beautiful transfer of a classic black and white episode from television's Golden Age. When will Maverick and some of these classic westerns finally make the jump to DVD?

There's also a feature commentary by Time film critic Richard Schickel (although I would have much preferred Eastwood). A new featurette about the making of the film as well as the original featurette on the making of the film.

If you're not interested in the extras and the nearly pristine transfer doesn't appeal to you, the single disc earlier edition of Unforgiven looks very good as well athough nowhere near as sharp as this one. It's about half the cost and might be a good place to start if you haven't seen the film and are unsure about purchasing it.

Rating:
Summary: more than a western...
Review: This movie is really much more than a story of the Old West, although it is that and masterfully so. It deals with issues such as the different natures of human individuals, redemption, revenge, ego, etc. Clint Eastwood's character is a violent, cold-blooded killer even though he desperately does not want to be. He is not cruel or obnoxious, he simply has no compunctions about killing. His young partner, "The Schofield Kid", is the gentle person that William Munny (Eastwood) wants to be, even though the kid himself desperately wants to be a ruthless killer like Munny. But it's not as simple as that. Because even after Munny decides he must use his "knack" for murder to complete his "mission" he is rusty and incompetent. He misses shots and gets pushed around. It is only after a bout of illness and a return to drinking that he becomes a one-man army bent of avenging his friend's death. So really the movie shows how even our very basic natures as individuals are nebulous and elusive. The movie also has moments of great humor, mostly involving another wannabe villain (although with a little more credibility than The Schofield Kid), the effete "English Bob" and his flunkey biographer. The movie also ties Bob and his biographer's story in with the mythologization of "The Old West" and how the violence that really existed during that period was much more savage and much less glamorous than is recorded. In this way William Munny also sets himself apart as one of the very few (or perhaps only) "real deals". It's doubtful another decent Western can be made after this movie, which has such an air of finality about it. It is an obituary of a genre, albeit a profound and deeply moving one, from a true cinematic legend.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Just a few things stuck in my head after watching the film:
-The sound of the rain.
-The creaking floor boards as people move around.
-The he-means-business scowl on Clint's half-lit face.
-The gun barrel appearing in the saloon doorway for the showdown.
-The empty whiskey bottle hitting the muddy ground as Clint rides into town to even the score.
-"I ain't like that no more"
-"We all got it coming,kid"