Year of Eastwood #20

Unforgiven (1992)

Starring: Eastwood, Gene Hackman

Directed by Eastwood

By the time the 90’s rolled around, Clint’s career was pretty much at a crossroads. He was still a major movie star, but it had been over a decade since he had acted in a major hit and while his directorial efforts did get the occasional notice, the films made little impact at the box office. Even Clint's bread and butter - the western - failed to bring Clint back into the limelight. Like many of the major movie stars before him, Clint had reached that age where he could appear as supporting characters in films or he could ride off into the sunset to that cowboy ranch in southern California. But the Clintster wasn’t about to be relegated to playing some young starlet’s curmudgeonly grandfather. No, he had been hanging on to a script and when just when he seemed to need it most, he decided to whip it out - and finally Clint had something to sit on top his piles of money … a bunch of Oscar statuettes - and the first Best Actor nomination of his career.

Clint starts out the movie - minding his own business, of course - rolling around in the mud with a bunch of pigs on his ranch in Missouri. He had long ago put away his past as a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition, after he came across a kind-hearted woman. So it’s the end of the line for Blondie and Josey Wales. Like many of those kind-hearted types will do, she convinced Clint to put down his guns and the whiskey bottle and start living a fine up-standing life by living dirt poor in the middle of nowhere. A few years have passed and the Mrs. has died of the fever (in my mind I like to imagine that it’s Sondra Locke buried there in his backyard) and Clint finds now the only thing he has to show for it is a bunch of sick pigs and a couple of snotty brats.

One day, a young (nearly blind) gun-slinging hot shot shows up at his door, spinning a yarn about a large reward that’s being offered for the killing of a couple of thugs who cut up a whore’s face. Seems she laughed at how small one of the guy’s Willy was and he thought she deserved a good cutting. As the story got spread around, the cutting got worse and the guy’s Willy got smaller. Clint tells the young kid to get lost, but after thinking about it overnight, he decides the one thing he can’t abide by is cutting up whores. So he leaves his kids behind and teams up again with his old shooting buddy, Morgan Freeman, and head off with the young kid to collect some reward.

The town of Big Whiskey is run by a ruthless sheriff - Little Bill played by Gene - who has quite a history of killing and thuggery as well. He isn’t about to let all this talk about the whore’s reward allow his town to be run over with a bunch of lowlifes. Richard Harris shows up as an English windbag going on about the Queen and shooting Chinamen, so Gene kicks the snot out of him. When Clint and his gang ride into town, Gene’s about had it up to here with all these gun-toating dudes showing up - so he kicks the snot out of Clint. It’s a rare scene to see Clint have to drag himself, all bloodied and beaten, across the floor just to get away from Gene.

After Clint heals up, the gang tracks down the thugs and after a bunch of complications, Clint plugs one of them in the gut. Morgan decides that killing ain’t what it used to be now that he’s got a Squaw back home. So he heads out, but while Clint and the young kid track down and kill the other guy, Morgan is strung up by Gene and beaten to death. Well, no way Clint’s gonna stand for that.

Fear is the thing that separates a cold blooded killer and a dead man. Being cool-headed in a gun fight is more valuable than being quick on the draw, because you can shoot first - but that doesn't mean you're gonna hit what you're aiming at. For years, Clint had no fear but now he’s afraid of having to pay for all the horrors he’s faced down over the years. When Clint decides to return to the life he left behind - he enters into a slow descent back into that man he used to be.

Unforgiven won Best Picture and Best Director Academy Awards for the powerful final scenes in the film. Clint, drinking whiskey as the hard rain pours down, can no longer run from his past as he rides into town to face down Gene and kill just about everything else that stands in his way.