‘You sure don’t look
like no rootin’ tootin’ son of a bitch or cold blooded assassin,’ exclaims
young upstart and wannabe bounty hunter The Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett),when
he first comes across Clint Eastwood’s wrinkly, grizzled widower Will Munny,
working the earth in the old American west. Looking to cash in on the bounty
offered up by a group of prostitutes for the swift execution of the bandits who
cut up one of their own, the Kid can scarcely believe the sad, tired old man before
him is ‘the meanest son of a bitch alive,’ that he’s been searching for. He’s
in for one helluva surprise, as in this impeccable Best Picture Oscar winner directed
by Eastwood himself, the lines between fact and myth, heroism and villainy are
ambiguously blurred, with Clint reminding audiences that there’s plenty life in
the old dog yet.
When we first
encounter Munny, it’s easy to see where the Kid is coming from, as the supposedly
reformed mercenary who hung up his guns long, long ago seems like an old,
washed-up has-been, left to run a farm and doing a pretty lousy job of it. As
he wrestles with his conscience, interesting questions are raised about Will’s
motivations for considering this One Last Job: is it about the money? This job
could guarantee a better future for his poor, motherless kids. Or is it about
doing what’s right? As Will says of the outlaws he’ll be tasked with murdering,
drunken animals who gleefully slashed up a young whore: ‘they got it comin’.’ Yet,
there is also a hint of suggestion that this is the opportunity he’s waited
years for – the chance to get back into doing the only damn thing he was ever
any good at, namely cold, hard killing. It’s to Eastwood’s credit that he keeps
us guessing, right up to the film’s awesome, shocking crescendo, whether Munny
will live up to the legends.
As Munny attempts to
get back into character, eleven long years after he left his bounty hunting
days behind, we discover that he can barely get up on his horse and really can’t
shoot for shit anymore. Munny needs to get his mojo back, cutting a poignant
figure, as own kids look on, embarrassed by the old lug struggling to get back
in the saddle. It is interesting to see Eastwood, an absolute legend of the
Western genre, exposing his frailties by taking on such a flawed, vulnerable
role, and it is a profound, emotional experience joining him on his journey to
see if, after all these years, he’s still got what it takes to be a real Hard
Bastard.
Joining up with his old
comrade Ned (Morgan Freeman), Munny and the Kid ride off for the little town of
Big Whisky, where Gene Hackman’s hardnosed sheriff ‘Little’ Bill Daggett keeps
the peace by resorting to brutal, violent tactics. Along the way the men
reminisce around the campfire, giving insight into their past transgressions. He
sees a lot of himself in the big-talkin’, whisky-sluggin’ Schofield Kid and it
is evident in his eyes that he doesn’t like what he sees, the young, innocent
buck standing at a crossroads in his life that reminds the old warhorse of the
lamentable path he once took. Munny seems disconsolate as he considers some of
the terrible things he’s supposed to have done. ‘You ain’t like that no more,’
opines Ned, but something in his voice only half convinces us, and it is little
ambiguities like this that make the film such a treat. As their journey
continues, small tidbits about Munny’s past are gradually teased out,
constantly altering our perceptions of the cowpoke who, at first, seemed merely
nothing more than a harmless old man. Munny is at once a sad, lonely old fool
who still pines for his dead wife, but also shady, whispered-about gunslinger,
described by those who remember his from
way-back-when as ‘cold as the snow.’ Yet
despite all we learn about him, Munny still manages to engage our sympathies,
staying true to his deceased beloved when the prostitutes offer him ‘free ones’,
and soaking up a beating from Little Bill, when he is cornered in a saloon.
Relentlessly battered for daring to bear arms in Bill’s town, we are left to
ponder if Munny is still cut out for all this, as he barely puts up a fight as
the lawman wades in. Munny also shows compassion when, having shown off his
rifle skills by tagging one of the whore-slashing outlaws from considerable
distance, he allows the desperado’s pals to bring him water as his life slowly,
painfully ebbs away in the afternoon desert heat. It says a lot for Clint’s
performance that though Munny kills for money, we find ourselves wholeheartedly
rooting for him.
Munny just about
scrapes through the final bullet-whizzin’ encounter with the outlaw gang,
seemingly relieved that the Kid takes care of the more grisly acts of violence
by blasting the final bandit as he sits on the crapper. The job seemingly over,
both men seem disconcerted, regretful of what they’ve done, with the Kid
swearing off violence for the rest of his days, telling Will ‘I’m not like you.’
Going their separate ways, Munny too seems to swear off his wicked ways, bearing
a sad, confused look that tells us that this experience really did not provide
him with the closure he was searching for. However, all that changes when word
reaches that Ned has been captured and killed by Little Bill for not revealing the
whereabouts of his partners and Munny saddles up one last time to go and even
the score. That sad look transforms into one of horrible acceptance that makes
us instantly understand that he’s been holding back this whole time. His friend
is dead and it’s all his fault, and the real
old Will has to come back if he’s gonna do this properly. Things are about to
get ugly…
Swaggering into the
local brothel on his lonesome, brandishing a massive rifle, Munny suddenly
seems to have doubled in height, chest puffed out, that familiar Eastwood growl
spooking out every miserable straphanger in the joint. When it all kicks off, Munny
is like a man transformed, the demon finally unleashed as he tears up the
place, blasting anything with a pulse, shouting cool, fearsome things like ‘I
killed everything that ever walked or crawled!’ When his rifle misfires, he
still finds time to chuck it at Little Bill, before drawing his six-shooter, so
ineffective before, and displaying some spectacular marksmanship to take out
multiple cowpokes in seconds. Unloading into Bill’s head, Munny stares right
into his eyes, not even flinching as he does so. It has been a long time
getting there, but this is Clint’s
supreme badass moment that we have all been waiting for, and it is so
scorchingly incendiary that it is well worth it.
With Bill dead and
the job done, Will savours the moment and takes a long hard drink of whisky –
his first in years. It is his moment of acceptance, a realisation that he can
never change the man he is and the things he’s done. As an onlooker cries, ‘You
killed five men singlehanded!’, Munny just shrugs and drawls, ‘Yeah…’ like it’s
no big thing. To escape the bar, Munny roars to all gathered outside that he
will kill every man in town and their wives if they try to stop him riding out
of there, fearsomely leaving us to contemplate if he is merely playing up to
his legend, or if he is capable of far, far worse. Riding off, he orders the
townsfolk to ‘bury Ned right, or I’ll come back and kill every one of you sons
of bitches,’ and you kind of get the impression that they will most certainly
be sparing no expense for the poor bastard’s send-off.
Unforgiven is Clint at his finest, sucker-punching the audience as
he unleashes a character who turns out to be far more frightening and stoic
than we are ever led to believe. The film brilliantly plays with legend and
fact, reputation versus truth, to deliver a memorable character study for the
ages. Will Munny is, without a doubt, one Hard Bastard.
THE RATINGS:
INDESTRUCTIBILITY: 7/10 – He’s old, he’s weary, but if you
hurt his friends, he will not be stopped!
COMBAT SKILLS: 7/10 – He’s rubbish at first, but reveals he
was only holding back. When the monster is unleashed this guy could kill you in
his sleep.
ATTITUDE: 6/10 – Ambiguous. The bad guys definitely got it
comin’, but it’s hinted that Munny’s perpetrated some seriously nasty shit in
the past.
OUTRAGEOUSNESS: 7/10 – Lives up to his reputation as ‘the
meanest son of a bitch alive.’
BODY COUNT: 7 kills in 131 minutes – takes far too long to
unleash the beast. But then, that’s the point… 1/10
CLINT’S SCORE: 28/50
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