Eastwood's Unforgiven examines the futility of revenge, violence

There is no revenge as sweet as forgiveness - Josh Billings

In many movies, particularly in the genres of drama, action/adventure, sci-fi, and even horror, the quest for - and futility of - personal justice or revenge is one of the themes many screenwriters and directors are attracted to.

The modern Western, that almost-extinct all-American blend of history and mythology that depicts the westward expansion of the United States in the mid- to late 1800s, is a genre that explores the revenge motivation in many movies, especially those starring and/or directed by Clint Eastwood.

Throughout Eastwood's 50-plus-years-long film career, the legendary actor/writer/director has done quite a few eye-for-an-eye oaters, including Hang 'em High, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and The Outlaw Josey Wales.

Perhaps the best of Eastwood's explorations of revenge and violence and the ultimate futilty of both as solutions to problems is his 1992 Oscar-winning Unforgiven.

 It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.


Set in 1880 sometime after the assassination of President James A. Garfield, Unforgiven begins when two rowdy cowboys ride into the town of Big Whiskey looking for a night of fun with booze and prostitutes at the local cathouse.

Unfortunately, things take a bad turn when Quick Mike (David Mucci) takes offense at an ill-timed giggle from Delilah (Anna Thompson), a new girl from Boston. Enraged by this affront to his manhood,  Quick Mike takes out a sharp hunting  knife and slashes poor Delilah's face. 
Although Delilah is spared from certain death by the quick intervention of madam Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher) and the other girls, her career as a prostitute is more than likely over, and Quick Mike and his hapless friend Davey Bunting (Rob Campbell) are spared a whipping by Big Whiskey's sheriff, Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman) but are run out of town and ordered to make restitution by surrendering some of their best horses.
 
For Strawberry Alice and her girls, this is not only shocking; it's insulting.  Delilah has been nearly killed and left scarred - and unable to ply her vocation - by a drunk and vicious man, and he's not even whipped?
 
Meanwhile, the now-widowed Will Munny is struggling to eke out a living as a hog farmer on the plot of land where he lives with the two children (Shane Meier, Aline Levasseur) which his beloved Claudia bore him before her untimely death.  In a classic scene which reflects a "fish out of water" sensibility, Will tries to manhandle a mud-covered pig to separate it from some fever-stricken hogs, but falls face-first into the wet muck instead.

This being a Western, we know that when the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) first appears in Unforgiven, Munny's past as a "thief and a murderer" is going to come back and haunt him.

Exaggerating both his own prowess as a gunfighter and the details of Quick Mike's assault on Delilah, the Schofield Kid makes Will an offer he can't easily refuse: Strawberry Alice and her girls have pooled their earnings and are offering a $1,000 bounty to whoever kills Quick Mike and Davey Bunting.

Will is reluctant at first; he remembers that Claudia defied her mother's wishes and left home to marry him in spite of his infamy as an outlaw. He also takes to heart all the things he promised, especially now that he is a widowed father.

But at the same time, the promise of $500 from a two-way split between the Schofield KId and himself sound very attractive to a man whose pig-raising business is going nowhere.

He agrees to join the Kid on his quest to kill Quick Mike and Davey, but on the condition that they add Will's old partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), who is now married and trying to go straight.

In the heyday of the traditional Western, much of this would have (a) been toned down (Delilah would have been, say, a schoolmarm slapped by Quick Mike) and (b) the focus of the story would have been on Will, Ned and the Kid as they chased the "black hats" and collected the bounty offered by Big Whiskey's leading citizens.

But Unforgiven isn't that kind of "leading man and supporting cast" Western.  Instead, it offers us looks at a wide range of characters, including Little Bill Daggett, a man whose congenial, even humorous, exterior conceals an obsession with law and order that drives him to brutal extremes.

Screenwriter David Webb Peoples (Blade Runner) and Eastwood also focus on the transition of the West from its near-mythical pioneers-and-gunslingers era to the modern, civilized West of 20th Century America. 

Not only do they do this by tweaking the Shane scenario of gunfighters renouncing violence and becoming members of the community. but also by way of introducing the character of English Bob (Richard Harris), a renowned gunslinger who now makes money by selling exaggerated tales of his duels and gunfights as written by his biographer, W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek).

While far from perfect - there are some historical inconsistencies (anachronisms about ammunition which didn't exist at the time, for instance) and a few glaring continuity errors (we see the Schofield Kid shoot one character three times in the chest, then when we see the Kid back away from the scene, the dead man has a head wound), Unforgiven is a classic tale which points out that revenge gives only an instant's worth of satisfaction and that violence eventually corrupts everyone who resorts to it.

Take, for instance, Gene Hackman's Little Bill Daggett.  Labeled by many viewers as evil, Big Whiskey's sheriff is actually a well-meaning guy who unfortunately adopts a "might makes right" philosophy to law enforcement.  Unlike most "corrupt sheriffs" in Westerns, Hackman's character is beholden to no one with power or money; like former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates - who Little Bill is patterned after - Big Whiskey's lawman thinks the best way to keep the peace is to put fear in the mind of any would-be lawbreakers.  As such, he sees the world in simple terms of black-and-white, with no subtle shades of gray in between.

Some viewers have said Unforgiven is too violent and even a bit unrealistic in its portrayal of life in the old West, particularly in its depiction of Munny's "abandonment" of his two children while he goes off on this final bounty hunt.

While it is true that Unforgiven does follow the path of many a Hollywood Western and overdoes the gunplay, it is, ultimately, a mix of mythology and some actual historical detail. 

The myth part, of course, is embodied in all the gunwielding cowboys, bounty hunters and townspeople.  The Old West was not exactly a peaceful setting in which Americans lived during the era of expansion and settlement, but it was not as violent as the movies and TV shows would have one believe.

However, back then children were treated almost like adults; they learned to tend to the crops and any livestock their families owned at an early age, and quite often they had to learn self-reliance under the worst of conditions.  Thus, in this respect anyway, Unforgiven is a reflection of 19th century reality in the American frontier.

Though it's sometimes bleak and somewhat tragic, Unforgiven is a masterpiece not only of the Western genre (it's, along with Cimarron and Dances With Wolves, one of only three oaters to take home the Academy Award for Best Picture), but of American filmmaking.