Unforgiven (1992)
Average Rating: 8.7/10
Reviews Counted: 77
Fresh: 74 | Rotten: 3
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.
Average Rating: 7.9/10
Critic Reviews: 18
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 2
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.
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Average Rating: 4/5
User Ratings: 117,771
Movie Info
Dedicated to his mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, Clint Eastwood's 1992 Oscar-winner examines the mythic violence of the Western, taking on the ghosts of his own star past. Disgusted by Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett's decree that several ponies make up for a cowhand's slashing a whore's face, Big Whiskey prostitutes, led by fierce Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher), take justice into their own hands and put a $1000 bounty on the lives of the perpetrators. Notorious outlaw-turned-hog farmer
Aug 3, 1992 Wide
Mar 26, 1997
Warner Bros. Pictures
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Cast
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Clint Eastwood
Bill Munny -
Gene Hackman
Sheriff "Little Bill... -
Morgan Freeman
Ned Logan -
Richard Harris
English Bob -
Jaimz Woolvett
The "Schofield Kid" -
Saul Rubinek
W.W. Beauchamp -
Frances Fisher
Strawberry Alice -
David Mucci
Quick Mike -
Rob Campbell
Davey Bunting -
Anthony James
Skinny Dubois -
Beverley Elliott
Silky -
Tara Dawn Frederick
Little Sue -
Greg Goossen
Fighter -
Larry Joshua
Bucky -
Robert Koons
Crocker -
Henry Kope
German Joe Schultz -
Aline Levasseur
Penny Munny -
Anna Levine
Delilah Fitzgerald -
Jefferson Mappin
Fatty Rossiter -
Walter Marsh
Barber -
Shane Meier
Will Munny -
John Pyper-Ferguson
Charley Hecker -
Jeremy Ratchford
Deputy Andy Russell -
Liisa Repo-Martell
Faith -
Josie Smith
Crow Creek Kate -
Ron White
Clyde Ledbetter -
Michael Maurer
Train Person #3 -
George Orrison
The Shadow -
Frank C. Turner
Fuzzy -
Ben Cardinal
Johnny Foley -
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-
Chad Dowdell
Curious Townsperson ... -
Philip Maurice Hayes
Lippy MacGregor -
Mina E. Mina
Muddy Chandler -
Lochlyn Munro
Texas Slim
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Unforgiven Trailer & Photos
All Critics (77) | Top Critics (18) | Fresh (74) | Rotten (3) | DVD (34)
It shouldn't be missed by anyone with a taste for Eastwood's typically slanted morality. It's the actor/director's best movie -- and the best Western by anybody -- in over 20 years.
Top CriticUnforgiven ain't nuthin' new, y'unnerstan', but it's a good, old-fashioned western-type pitcher with plenty o' rootin' tootin' action 'n' big ol' horses 'n' 10-gallon hats 'n' sech.
Eastwood deliberately upends the conventions of the western, subverting his own image in the process.
The Western is back. With a vengeance. Saddle up or get out of the way.
This is the finest set of performances ever to grace a Clint Eastwood movie, and this time Eastwood even does a good job directing Eastwood. Every bullet in this movie matters.
This dark, melancholic film is a reminder-never more necessary than now-of what the American cinema is capable of, in the way of expressing a mature, morally complex and challenging view of the world.
Realistic and thoughtful, Unforgiven has the pictorial sweep we've come to expect from the genre and the intelligence too long missing from it.
This isn't just a great Western. It's a great movie, no matter what the genre.
[Unforgiven] belongs to a tradition that includes such giants of the genre as Mann, Boetticher, Peckinpah and Hawks.
There is unlikely to be a better movie from the States or anywhere else this year.
High Noon it isn't; it's more like the darkest midnight of the American soul.
While Eastwood dedicates the film to Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, his early directors, he doesn't seem to have learned all that much from them.
That's always been Eastwood's appeal -- the imperial authority that he projects on the screen. In Unforgiven, he uses that authority to deliver an anti-violence message that is truly powerful, never shrill and preachy.
Unforgiven plays out its drama with enough old-fashioned sobriety to lend the proceedings a classical air... It also incorporates enough latter-day cynicism, though, to comply with contemporary Hollywood fashion.
This is, quite simply, one of the finest films ever made in the genre.
Unforgiven exposes the true price behind the way the West was won.
Clint Eastwood's westerns are distinctive, and that Unforgiven, as the most fully realized, is the most distinctive of all.
It's a somber feature, but one of extraordinary character development, bundled into a compelling story of men facing their sins in a most brutal, pitiless manner.
One of the absolute masterpieces of American cinema in the 1990s.
The great Orson Welles once stated that Clint Eastwood was the most underrated filmmaker in America, and the sobering footnote is that he passed away in 1985, well before Eastwood began to be taken seriously as an artist by most critics and moviegoers.
Audience Reviews for Unforgiven
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Movies Like Unforgiven
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- Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett: I'll see you in hell Bill Munny.
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- Will Munny: I've killed women and children. I've killed everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you done to Ned.
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- Will Munny: What I said the other day, you looking like me, that ain't true. You ain't ugly like me, it's just that we both have got scars.
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- Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett: This guy here is the Duck of Death...
- W.W. Beauchamp: Duke
- Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett: Duck I say
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- Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett: I don't deserve this... to die like this. I was building a house.
- Bill Munny: Deserve's got nothin' to do with it.
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- Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett: Well sir, you are a cowardly son of a bitch. You just shot an unarmed man.
- Bill Munny: He should have armed himself....... if he's going to decorate his saloon with my friend.
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Can someone explain to me why this movie is so well rated and acclaimed? | 3 months ago | 3 |
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When this film can out, it was fairly obvious that it was intended to be the western to end all westerns, the one to bring the genre to a close. That obviously didn't happen, but it did do a fantastic job at demythologizing things, and showing the consequences of violence, guilt, closure.
It's a great film, but not without flaws. It's a bit too long, and drags in places, some of the material is a bit unnecessary, and the stuff with English Bob could have been trimmed and reworked. Also, the prologue and epilogue, I think, could have been tweaked a little as well.
All that aside, this is a wonderful character study. The cast are really good, and they give some tremendous performances. Pretty much everyone shines. I really liked Frances Fisher, though. Eastwood and Hackman have a great confrontation, and Freeman just finds the right notes with his character.
The film is violent, but not in a ridiculous, WIld Bunch kind of way. The cinematic way the violence and showdowns are handled subvert expectations, and are handled in a startingly (yet artful) way. There's a chilling aspect to the matter of fact callousness of things which really lend strength and credibility to the film's themes and thesis.
This is some really great stuff, but not perfect. It's a little overrated, and seems dated now, but it's nevertheless a fantastic and entertaining work of art.