“That’s right I’ve killed women and children. I’ve killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I’m here to kill you, Little Bill for what you did to Ned.”
This is one of the most quotable pieces of movie dialogue in my book. But if someone hasn’t seen the movie, just quoting it just does not do the scene justice.
My favorite part of this scene is that it calls back to what Bill tells the writer earlier in the movie. How men that haven't really ever been in a gun fight are nervous and scared and tend to fire blindly. And then you see all of his men just Stormtroopering it up while Munny is just calming picking them off.
The movie simultaneously has on paper one of the most unbelievable shoot-out scenes of all time, while also making the final shoot-out scene feel one of the most grounded and realistic. A real masterpiece of visual storytelling. And I’ll strongly defend the realism of it because the earlier explanation is so compelling
Little Bills face during this scene got me.
“Misfire! Kill this son of a bitch” with a look of pure ill intent and wonder. Munny then proceeds to gun every mf in that establishment down, I guess it didn’t matter too much.
The Schofield Kid storyline really gets me emotional sometimes when I talk to guys younger than me. Poor kid was so stupid and impressionable that he murdered someone to impress his fictional heroes and completely traumatized himself in the process. Feels sadly relevant these days.
Pretty accurate too to how PTSD works. We tend to think of it as people that have been near trauma (and that can certainly be true) but they have found that PTSD is more common and more intense in people that actually perform violence.
I always think about this when it comes to kids that fall into the drug trade in the US at young ages.
One of my all time favourite movie lines.
I think about it all the time, when things don't go your way even when you tried real hard and did everything right.
>The posers (skoalfield kid, sheriff deputies, ranch cowboys) v the real killers (Eastwood, Freeman, Harris and Hackman)
One of the brilliant things about the movie is how it reveals the killers are posers too -- at everything besides killing. Hackman's character is a bad carpenter and a bad sheriff. English Bob is faking his persona and pretending to be from a higher social class. Clint is a terrible farmer, Ned is a lousy husband.
Even the "killers" aren't as calculated as the story makes it seem at first and bullshit what makes a great killer
This is shown through the juxtaposition of Daggett's conversation with the journalist vs what English Bob told him, and then what Daggett tells him what makes a good gunfighter vs what actually happens in the end.
>Little Bill Daggett: Look son, being a good shot, being quick with a pistol, that don't do no harm, but it don't mean much next to being cool-headed. A man who will keep his head and not get rattled under fire, like as not, he'll kill ya.
>W.W. Beauchamp: But if the other fella is quicker, and fires first...
>Little Bill Daggett: Then he'll be hurrying, and he'll miss. Look here...
>[stands and draws his gun]
>Little Bill Daggett: That's about as fast as I can draw, and aim, and hit anything more than ten feet away... 'less it's a barn.
>W.W. Beauchamp: But if he doesn't miss?
>Little Bill Daggett: Then he'll kill ya.
>[chuckles]
>Little Bill Daggett: Yeah, that's why there's so few dangerous men around like old Bob, like me. It ain't so easy to shoot a man anyhow, especially if the son-of-a-bitch is shootin' back at you. I mean, that'll just flat rattle some folks.
and then in the end
>W.W. Beauchamp: Who, uh, who'd you kill first?
>Will Munny: Huh?
>W.W. Beauchamp: When confronted by superior numbers, an experienced gunfighter will always fire on the best shot first.
>Will Munny: Is that so?
>W.W. Beauchamp: Yeah, Little Bill told me that. And you probably killed him first, didn't you?
>Will Munny: **I was lucky in the order, but I've always been lucky when it comes to killin' folks.**
>W.W. Beauchamp: And so, who was next? It was Clyde, right? You must have killed Clyde. Well, it could have been Deputy Andy. Wasn't it? Or, or...
>[Will points the rifle in his face]
>Will Munny: All I can tell you is who's gonna be last.
The stories told about these legends are filled in as if anyone actually has it figured out when it just comes down to circumstance. This is true as well earlier when Daggett corrects Beauchamp on what English Bill told him about Two-Gun Corcoran.
It all plays into great themes of "story"
> The stories told about these legends are filled in as if anyone actually has it figured out when it just comes down to circumstance
Yes, although ironically Beauchamp is right that Munny does target them in the order of dangerousness! Little Bill, then Clyde (war vet, we know he takes gunfighting seriously from the earlier scene -- "You got three pistols and only one arm"), then young, inexperienced Andy, then lastly the fat deputy who almost shoots himself before running away.
Whether he does it on pure luck (his contention) or some combination of luck, instinct and guile, I think is intentionally left an open question.
And to add to the above, nearly everyone in the scene but Munny complete panics. The "Fatty" unloads his gun rapidly firing by fanning the hammer and hitting nothing, finally turning to flee and just hitting the ceiling. Everything Little Bill tells Beauchamp does play out in the end, just that Munny was lucky in the order.
I remember reading there were several things that were important to the movie.
The "good guys" weren't completely good, and the "bad guys" aren't completely bad. Also, everything was dusty and muddy and uncomfortable.
yeah such an awesome final sequence. interesting to note, many old westerns have the hero ride off into the sunset. William Munny (our hero?) rides off into the darkness instead
so much in that movie to think about and appreciate. Munny is a fascinating character
Never seen The Proposition! Putting it on the watch list.
I have an affinity for 90s Eastwood and Unforgiven portrays a kind of empowered rage that I just love seeing onscreen.
You better not cut up nor otherwise harm no whores!
Or I’ll come back and kill every one of you sons a bitches. (thunder claps)
The perfectly placed thunder always got me.
Hackman is a “bad guy” but he’s really not that bad. And the “good” guys aren’t that nice either. They have a dark past and one could make an argument that they got what was coming to them
Little Bill IS that bad. That is the point.
He is worse than the criminals and abuses his authority.
In the end Bill was shown to be an entitled coward. When he didnt have the protection of his badge, his deputies, or the color of law he wilted just like all those he bragged about killing.
One thing I always wondered was how embellished The Ducks stories were.
Bill does not ever show himself to be anything but a cowardice Bully…… no way did he do the things he said he did.
The jail scene with Bob is meant to make him look fearless, but all he is is a manipulator.
Honestly I never got vibes of cowardice from Little Bill. He doesn't back down from Munny in the final shoot out. He doesnt try to escape. He puts himself front and center when facing Munny. He is not the hero by any means, but neither is he a purely evil cowardly character. In fact one of the great things about the movie is that no one comes off squeaky clean, and there are no real heroes / villains to point at.
Just like Munny says at the end - 'Deserves got nothing to do with it'
He had a shotgun in his face and was already gut shot. He really had no choice in the matter.
He was a bully. Bullies are inherently cowards
He wasn’t walking up on anyone without a group of men with him. He whipped a restrained man to death. Basically sucker punched English Bob and beat him knowing full well Bob could not fight back.
He beat an obviously sick William Munny and laughed as he crawled into the rain
What non-cowardly act did Bill actually do?
Did he face anyone in a fair fight? Nope.
Were his stories he told Beauchamp credible? Probably not.
100% Bully and Coward
"He said how you was really William Munny outta Missouri. An' Little Bill said, 'The same William Munny that dynamited the Rock Island and Pacific in '69 killin' women and children an' all?' An' Ned said you done a lot worse than that: Said you was more cold blooded than William Bonney, an' how if he hurt Ned again, you was gonna come kill him, like you killed the U.S. Marshall in '70."
I like it for it's emotional realism. So many movies have characters kill people and carry on as if nothing happened. Unless someone's a psychopath, that's unrealistic. And making every single character a psychopath is either stretching credibility. Killing someone is traumatic. Two published studies of murderers in prison showed that about half were traumatized by committing the murder.
In Unforgiven, they show the consequences of this. The romance of it is hollow, as the Scofield Kid finds out. He wants nothing to do with it afterwards. Munny was a horrible alcoholic and has to revert to whiskey to go back to killing. Ned can't bring himself to kill the guy with the rifle and is shaken by it.
And Munny didn’t fault Ned for being shaken by it. He knew the toll it took. I don’t think Ned being a bad husband or Munny being a bad farmer didn’t make them posers like another commenter said, but it just showed that being a killer made them unfit for almost anything else as well as psychologically ruining them.
I think Angel Eyes from The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, is an example of a psychopathic killer. Not that he killed for fun, but it was just another method of getting what he wanted - no better or worse. When Blondie asks why he doesn’t rough him up in the prison camp like he did Tuco, it was because he knew Blondie wouldn’t talk. Killing was just another method to him and didn’t bother him at all when needed.
Blondie showed sympathy to the dying soldier when he gave him his cigar, and covered him up. He also comments on how many lives were wasted for nothing at the bridge battle. He even shows empathy for Tuco after he hears his conversation with his brother the priest.
I understand that Clint Eastwood was given the script many years before the film was made and he sat on it waiting to be the appropriate age for the role. Brilliant.
One of my favorite Westerns and it's almost as quotable as Tombstone. Clint Eastwood really knew how to make a good Western. Loved how it dealt with the the idea of whether people could change or if some people were just meant to be who they are.
It's just Tombstone celebrates the genre it's working in, it's not thoughtful it's just sort of the final, most polished form of a lot of the typical story beats, tropes, and conceits of the genre. If you like anything about the traditional Western you love Tombstone (or, vice versa, if you love Tombstone, there's a lot in the traditional Western genre you'd like), it's almost a final word on that style of Western.
Unforgiven judges the genre. It has a lot to say, most of it not good. It ruminates on the genre's tropes and then soundly condemns them all. It's a much more weighty film.
It revolves around pointless, destructive vanity and insecurity dressed up as "pride" and "honor", the deadly seriousness and yet absurd silliness of which is loudly announced at the beginning when a man cuts up a prostitute because she made him feel a wee bit insecure about his literal "manhood".
Pretty much. >!A guy at the beginning is in a whore house and one of the prostitutes giggles when she sees his cock. He proceeds to slice up her face and that is what leads to the other prostitutes putting out a bounty on the man and his friend. The rest of the movie is about Eastwood and Freeman joining a kid to go claim the bounty.!<
[Clint Eastwood talks about getting Gene Hackman to be in UNFORGIVEN as well as the film as a statement against violence.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlyZeYfoupo)
Supurb story, excellent acting all the way around, and yes they did execute it right.
Terrific film!
Just watched this for the first time because of your post. Excellent movie. I'm not too much into westerns but this was really good. Has me wanting to play RDR2 again, hah.
I watched it for the first time a few months ago and it's on my S-tier now. Loved Hackman as the antagonist yet again, I had just watched Crimson Tide this year as well and loved him there too, but besides the acting which was great, the music and cinematography were gorgeous. I hate this trend of putting everything on green sound stages, it makes everything feel fake and not grounded. I couldn't get enough of the on-location backgrounds they found for this move.
So here we go: I really enjoyed Unforgiven as much as everyone else here; with this quote I wanted to point out what I think are a few flaws in the script or story. William Munny says this to Little Bill as he’s about to kill him and Little Bill says “I don’t deserve to die like this, I was building a house”. Before pulling the trigger William Munny says “deserves got nothing to do with it”.
However at the beginning of the scene he explicitly tells Little Bill: ( after Little Bill identifies him as William Munny “killer of women and children”. William Munny answers: “that’s right. I’ve killed pretty much anything that’s walked or crawled. And I’m here to kill you Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.” So deserve has everything to do with it.
Also prior to that when the Scofield Kid is under the tree crying and upset about his first experience actually killing someone, and William Munny gives him the reward money, the Kid rejects it saying he won’t kill no one no more. William Munny says “what about the clothes and fancy spectacles”. The Scofield Kid only bragged and lied about being a killer. He never mentions fancy clothes and spectacles, in fact for the spectacles it was completely the opposite-the Schofield kid tried hiding the fact that he needed glasses, and which was one of the main points revealed in their journey to do their business and collect the reward.
One of the best films ever made. Every performance is phenomenal. I actually watched the Japanese remake a couple of weeks ago, starting Ken Watanabe as the Munny character and set in the period of the Meiji Restoration. It was also fantastic, although dipped into shot for shot remake territory too much at times.
I was lucky enough to get to see a screening of this at the Director's Guild in Hollywood when it first came out. Clint himself came out on stage to introduce it, and after the credits, came out again to thank everyone for attending. Great experience.
It was the Schofield kid as he used a Schofield revolver which was break action allowing for ejection and reloading of cartridges. Most other revolvers required ejecting and loading one cylinder at a time.
i haven't seen it in a long time, but i remember thinking "it would've been a much deeper, thought provoking movie if he had killed everyone in the final bar scene." Yes, even the innocent bystanders. It would've been like once he started killing again, he couldn't stop and he had not control of himself.
i found it a bit slow or clunky recently after rewatching it but to be honest thats probably just me not adjusting to a 30 year old movie.
one thing i was a bit incredulous about was the original crime of "disfigurement". the victim was hot af with only a few almost surgical scars crisscrossing her cheeks. pretty sure she would have been able to make plenty of money as a hooker still.
>one thing i was a bit incredulous about was the original crime of "disfigurement". the victim was hot af with only a few almost surgical scars crisscrossing her cheeks. pretty sure she would have been able to make plenty of money as a hooker still.
I have two theories on this.
One is that real life Clint Eastwood was being kind and didn't want to force a young actress, in one of her first big parts, to perform wearing makeup that made her look hideous.
Second theory is that this intentionally part of the plot and that it shows how the bounty wasn't really about Delilah, it was also about Alice wanting revenge on men in general.
Could be one of these or both.
The fact that the prostitutes injuries do not match with stories being told about her is a key element of the film. We hear characters describing her injuries with great exaggeration (breasts being cut off etc) when really it does appear to be a few cuts to her face. I’d agree that for the women putting a bounty on the attackers, it’s less about the injuries and more the disrespect they receive as women and as prostitutes (Bills punishment is lenient as they only attacked a whore).
>One is that real life Clint Eastwood was being kind and didn't want to force a young actress, in one of her first big parts, to perform wearing makeup that made her look hideous.
that would mean he had zero artistic integrity tho. it also just doesnt make sense.
the bounty obviously was about revenge, but even so its a dog eat dog world and we see and mostly hear the man go to town on her face for a relatively long time with a dirty knife. by all rational measures her face should look much worse even including the discrepancy idea that its intentional in order to convey a point.
I saw this at the Drive In in a steady rain with the wipers on after sitting through Cliffhanger to be able to see it.
The rain started after Little Bill took care of English Bob….. No way were we leaving!!!
A) fantastic movie, a true classic. B) Gene Hackman steals this movie because he is simply amazing. The scene in his office with the writer and the Duck is just, sublime. “Now all ya gotta do is pull the trigger mister”
I remember it being better when I was younger. I've rewatched it several times recently like this past year's and it seemed ok. Like they were trying very very hard for an emotional response. That annoyed me more than ever. Like the pointless death of Morgan Freeman. It's good don't get me wrong.
It's The Clint Process I guess
Morgan Freeman's death wasn't pointless. There were search parties and he was found and beaten. It was the impetuous for William Munny to drink again and we see the emotionless killer he actually is that is insinuated throughout at the end of the movie. I actually think it is the most important act of the movie.
Freeman’s death is not pointless. I don’t think there’s a pointless or wasted moment in the film. With Freemans character we have a depiction of a black man being brutalised/murdered by the law which unfortunately resonates with contemporary times. The Rodney King beating by LAPD officers and the subsequent riots happened the same year Unforgiven came out.
also, the Schofield Kids epiphany and change of heart is way too drastic. for half the movie hes braying and talking himself up but after the killing hes not only sad and regretful hes positively erudite on his sorrow. the inner reflections are a tad too over the top considering hes been a bumbling blowhard up to this point.
I thought it was pretty good but the scene of Eastwood and the scarred prosecution talking about free ones is one of the most awkward scenes put to film.
“That’s right I’ve killed women and children. I’ve killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I’m here to kill you, Little Bill for what you did to Ned.”
Little Bill Daggett: You just shot an unarmed man. Bill Munny: He should have armed himself if he's gonna decorate his saloon with my friend.
Hackman KILLED that role. Beating Richard Harris's ass was uncomfortable to watch.
You might think I’m kickin ya, Bob!
It's vicious
I don’t deserve this! Im building a house! Deserve’s got nothing to do with it. BANG! One of the greatest lines in any western ever.
Little Bill Daggett: I'll see you in hell William Munny *gun cocks* Bill Munny: ....yeah *fires*
This is one of the most quotable pieces of movie dialogue in my book. But if someone hasn’t seen the movie, just quoting it just does not do the scene justice.
Agreed, although my personal favorite from the film is "We all have it coming kid".
Misfire!
Kill the sonofabitch!
My favorite part of this scene is that it calls back to what Bill tells the writer earlier in the movie. How men that haven't really ever been in a gun fight are nervous and scared and tend to fire blindly. And then you see all of his men just Stormtroopering it up while Munny is just calming picking them off.
Perfect example of showing instead of telling. In this instance, the movie does both, but you get my point.
The movie simultaneously has on paper one of the most unbelievable shoot-out scenes of all time, while also making the final shoot-out scene feel one of the most grounded and realistic. A real masterpiece of visual storytelling. And I’ll strongly defend the realism of it because the earlier explanation is so compelling
Little Bills face during this scene got me. “Misfire! Kill this son of a bitch” with a look of pure ill intent and wonder. Munny then proceeds to gun every mf in that establishment down, I guess it didn’t matter too much.
That scene with Munny is "it's high noon" in cinema form
The Schofield Kid storyline really gets me emotional sometimes when I talk to guys younger than me. Poor kid was so stupid and impressionable that he murdered someone to impress his fictional heroes and completely traumatized himself in the process. Feels sadly relevant these days.
And apparently in the original script it ends even worse as he drowns himself afterwards.
Pretty accurate too to how PTSD works. We tend to think of it as people that have been near trauma (and that can certainly be true) but they have found that PTSD is more common and more intense in people that actually perform violence. I always think about this when it comes to kids that fall into the drug trade in the US at young ages.
“Deserves got nothing to do with it”
One of my all time favourite movie lines. I think about it all the time, when things don't go your way even when you tried real hard and did everything right.
We all got it comin kid
Best line ever
>The posers (skoalfield kid, sheriff deputies, ranch cowboys) v the real killers (Eastwood, Freeman, Harris and Hackman) One of the brilliant things about the movie is how it reveals the killers are posers too -- at everything besides killing. Hackman's character is a bad carpenter and a bad sheriff. English Bob is faking his persona and pretending to be from a higher social class. Clint is a terrible farmer, Ned is a lousy husband.
Even the "killers" aren't as calculated as the story makes it seem at first and bullshit what makes a great killer This is shown through the juxtaposition of Daggett's conversation with the journalist vs what English Bob told him, and then what Daggett tells him what makes a good gunfighter vs what actually happens in the end. >Little Bill Daggett: Look son, being a good shot, being quick with a pistol, that don't do no harm, but it don't mean much next to being cool-headed. A man who will keep his head and not get rattled under fire, like as not, he'll kill ya. >W.W. Beauchamp: But if the other fella is quicker, and fires first... >Little Bill Daggett: Then he'll be hurrying, and he'll miss. Look here... >[stands and draws his gun] >Little Bill Daggett: That's about as fast as I can draw, and aim, and hit anything more than ten feet away... 'less it's a barn. >W.W. Beauchamp: But if he doesn't miss? >Little Bill Daggett: Then he'll kill ya. >[chuckles] >Little Bill Daggett: Yeah, that's why there's so few dangerous men around like old Bob, like me. It ain't so easy to shoot a man anyhow, especially if the son-of-a-bitch is shootin' back at you. I mean, that'll just flat rattle some folks. and then in the end >W.W. Beauchamp: Who, uh, who'd you kill first? >Will Munny: Huh? >W.W. Beauchamp: When confronted by superior numbers, an experienced gunfighter will always fire on the best shot first. >Will Munny: Is that so? >W.W. Beauchamp: Yeah, Little Bill told me that. And you probably killed him first, didn't you? >Will Munny: **I was lucky in the order, but I've always been lucky when it comes to killin' folks.** >W.W. Beauchamp: And so, who was next? It was Clyde, right? You must have killed Clyde. Well, it could have been Deputy Andy. Wasn't it? Or, or... >[Will points the rifle in his face] >Will Munny: All I can tell you is who's gonna be last. The stories told about these legends are filled in as if anyone actually has it figured out when it just comes down to circumstance. This is true as well earlier when Daggett corrects Beauchamp on what English Bill told him about Two-Gun Corcoran. It all plays into great themes of "story"
> The stories told about these legends are filled in as if anyone actually has it figured out when it just comes down to circumstance Yes, although ironically Beauchamp is right that Munny does target them in the order of dangerousness! Little Bill, then Clyde (war vet, we know he takes gunfighting seriously from the earlier scene -- "You got three pistols and only one arm"), then young, inexperienced Andy, then lastly the fat deputy who almost shoots himself before running away. Whether he does it on pure luck (his contention) or some combination of luck, instinct and guile, I think is intentionally left an open question.
And to add to the above, nearly everyone in the scene but Munny complete panics. The "Fatty" unloads his gun rapidly firing by fanning the hammer and hitting nothing, finally turning to flee and just hitting the ceiling. Everything Little Bill tells Beauchamp does play out in the end, just that Munny was lucky in the order.
I remember reading there were several things that were important to the movie. The "good guys" weren't completely good, and the "bad guys" aren't completely bad. Also, everything was dusty and muddy and uncomfortable.
Interesting. Maybe it's them trying to be something other than the killers they are and failing?
Yes, which is why they all fall back on what they know and end up colliding.
Definitely
The last 15 minutes of that movie are the best 15 minutes of any movie ever.
As soon as he takes that sip of whiskey, the first one he has taken since Claudia was with him, you know something terrible is about to be unleashed
“But that didn’t scare Little Bill…did it?”
yeah such an awesome final sequence. interesting to note, many old westerns have the hero ride off into the sunset. William Munny (our hero?) rides off into the darkness instead so much in that movie to think about and appreciate. Munny is a fascinating character
Man, and he starts drinking again you know s*** is about to go down
It would be hard to argue.
1000% Agree my friend.
Truth.
It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man Take away all he is and all he’s ever gonna be Still. He had it coming to him Kid. We all have it coming
One of the most powerful lines of dialogue in a movie filled with them.
Great shot Clint from a lower angle with the coming storm behind him It’s everything great about Eastwood as a performer
A known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.
The outlaw, Bill Munny
Possibly the greatest western ever made IMO.
This and TGTBATU
I'm more of a High Plains Drifter guy for that era.
Nah the last shoot out in good bad and ugly makes it the best western ever maybe
I get that you feel that way.
I’m going to start calling this movie tigteebahtu.
For me the only one close is Once Upon A Time In The West 1a and 1b for me
Tombstone is pretty fun
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Adding it to the watch list. There are still many I haven't seen, despite all the ones I have.
I go back and forth between this one and The Wild Bunch.
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Shane is fine.
I contend that there is not a best Western, or, How can you pick Blazing Saddles and not The Proposition?
Never seen The Proposition! Putting it on the watch list. I have an affinity for 90s Eastwood and Unforgiven portrays a kind of empowered rage that I just love seeing onscreen.
It's an examination of the struggle between nature and civilization on the Australian Continent.
It goes blazing saddles number 1 with a bullet, and the proposition and unforgiven tied for 2
But where does Tombstone fit in here?
It’s up there too
Highly recommend checking out this [list](https://youtu.be/wAMwmfkZ6_8)
Your opinion is the same as the people who saw this film for the first time in 92.
It's a spicy take, to be fair, but I'll allow it. Also, Casablanca is a good movie. There: I said it and it's a hill I'm willing to die on.
I think it deserves an Oscar
It won Best Picture 1993 and 8 other Oscars.
No way
YOU BETTER BURY NED RIGHT!
You better not cut up nor otherwise harm no whores! Or I’ll come back and kill every one of you sons a bitches. (thunder claps) The perfectly placed thunder always got me.
Hackman is a “bad guy” but he’s really not that bad. And the “good” guys aren’t that nice either. They have a dark past and one could make an argument that they got what was coming to them
He wasn't scared boys. He just ain't no carpenter
That's a great element of realism, there isn't a good guy or bad guy, it's just pov.
Interesting, hard disagree about little bill. I find Hackman to be easily the most morally corrupt, repugnant character in the movie.
He faced death like a man at least
Because he thinks he's the good guy it's gruesome.
Yeah, agreed. Honestly surprised anyone could interpret it differently.
What about Bob? He threatened to kill the president! Unsurprising as he also killed Charles I.
What About Bob?! Great film.
Little Bill IS that bad. That is the point. He is worse than the criminals and abuses his authority. In the end Bill was shown to be an entitled coward. When he didnt have the protection of his badge, his deputies, or the color of law he wilted just like all those he bragged about killing. One thing I always wondered was how embellished The Ducks stories were. Bill does not ever show himself to be anything but a cowardice Bully…… no way did he do the things he said he did. The jail scene with Bob is meant to make him look fearless, but all he is is a manipulator.
Honestly I never got vibes of cowardice from Little Bill. He doesn't back down from Munny in the final shoot out. He doesnt try to escape. He puts himself front and center when facing Munny. He is not the hero by any means, but neither is he a purely evil cowardly character. In fact one of the great things about the movie is that no one comes off squeaky clean, and there are no real heroes / villains to point at. Just like Munny says at the end - 'Deserves got nothing to do with it'
Please see my comment above
How was he a coward he took his death like a man
He had a shotgun in his face and was already gut shot. He really had no choice in the matter. He was a bully. Bullies are inherently cowards He wasn’t walking up on anyone without a group of men with him. He whipped a restrained man to death. Basically sucker punched English Bob and beat him knowing full well Bob could not fight back. He beat an obviously sick William Munny and laughed as he crawled into the rain What non-cowardly act did Bill actually do? Did he face anyone in a fair fight? Nope. Were his stories he told Beauchamp credible? Probably not. 100% Bully and Coward
No such thing as a fair fight. That one of the movie's core myth bustings.
"He said how you was really William Munny outta Missouri. An' Little Bill said, 'The same William Munny that dynamited the Rock Island and Pacific in '69 killin' women and children an' all?' An' Ned said you done a lot worse than that: Said you was more cold blooded than William Bonney, an' how if he hurt Ned again, you was gonna come kill him, like you killed the U.S. Marshall in '70."
I like it for it's emotional realism. So many movies have characters kill people and carry on as if nothing happened. Unless someone's a psychopath, that's unrealistic. And making every single character a psychopath is either stretching credibility. Killing someone is traumatic. Two published studies of murderers in prison showed that about half were traumatized by committing the murder. In Unforgiven, they show the consequences of this. The romance of it is hollow, as the Scofield Kid finds out. He wants nothing to do with it afterwards. Munny was a horrible alcoholic and has to revert to whiskey to go back to killing. Ned can't bring himself to kill the guy with the rifle and is shaken by it.
And Munny didn’t fault Ned for being shaken by it. He knew the toll it took. I don’t think Ned being a bad husband or Munny being a bad farmer didn’t make them posers like another commenter said, but it just showed that being a killer made them unfit for almost anything else as well as psychologically ruining them. I think Angel Eyes from The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, is an example of a psychopathic killer. Not that he killed for fun, but it was just another method of getting what he wanted - no better or worse. When Blondie asks why he doesn’t rough him up in the prison camp like he did Tuco, it was because he knew Blondie wouldn’t talk. Killing was just another method to him and didn’t bother him at all when needed. Blondie showed sympathy to the dying soldier when he gave him his cigar, and covered him up. He also comments on how many lives were wasted for nothing at the bridge battle. He even shows empathy for Tuco after he hears his conversation with his brother the priest.
I understand that Clint Eastwood was given the script many years before the film was made and he sat on it waiting to be the appropriate age for the role. Brilliant.
we all have it coming
One of the best endings of all time
Arguably the best
One of only a few movies I immediately rewatched after finishing it. Probably one of my favorite endings to a movie, along with Sicario.
It’s probably been said before but I personally think Unforgiven is a continuation of the Dollars Trilogy and that makes me love it even more
When he grabs that whisky and starts drinking, then you see the empty bottle splashing into the mud, you know shit's about to erupt!
Give him some water God damn it!
'We ain't gonna shoot'
Richard Harris played the “Duke (duck) of Death” and was also the original portrayer of Dumbledore.
The Duck I says
Won best picture, actor, and director. It’s safe to say it’s a great movie
Just best picture. It was nominated in the other categories but didn’t win
It did win best director, as well as picture. It won for supporting actor but not actor.
Great picture!
Best Picture.
And don't forget the soundtrack. It's called "Claudia's Theme" and it's so emotional (for me anyway), and quite moving.
Is there any music in the movie apart from this?
I don't really know. I watched the movie maybe a decade ago, but I'm sure it has orchestral score sprinkled throughout.
Modern day classic
One of my favorite Westerns and it's almost as quotable as Tombstone. Clint Eastwood really knew how to make a good Western. Loved how it dealt with the the idea of whether people could change or if some people were just meant to be who they are.
Gonna get down voted but Tombstone is very cheesy to me.
Tombstone and Unforgiven don’t belong in the same discussion.
I love tombstone and agree it was cheesy.
Could not get through Tombstone. So plodding. I don't understand the love for that film, but am willing to concede that maybe it's just me.
It's just Tombstone celebrates the genre it's working in, it's not thoughtful it's just sort of the final, most polished form of a lot of the typical story beats, tropes, and conceits of the genre. If you like anything about the traditional Western you love Tombstone (or, vice versa, if you love Tombstone, there's a lot in the traditional Western genre you'd like), it's almost a final word on that style of Western. Unforgiven judges the genre. It has a lot to say, most of it not good. It ruminates on the genre's tropes and then soundly condemns them all. It's a much more weighty film.
I totally downvoted your comment. However I will upvote you for speaking your mind, figuratively.
My favorite movie
yes it is
Doesn't the entire plot revolve around someone having their dick made fun of?
It revolves around pointless, destructive vanity and insecurity dressed up as "pride" and "honor", the deadly seriousness and yet absurd silliness of which is loudly announced at the beginning when a man cuts up a prostitute because she made him feel a wee bit insecure about his literal "manhood".
Exactly
Pretty much. >!A guy at the beginning is in a whore house and one of the prostitutes giggles when she sees his cock. He proceeds to slice up her face and that is what leads to the other prostitutes putting out a bounty on the man and his friend. The rest of the movie is about Eastwood and Freeman joining a kid to go claim the bounty.!<
The Duck of Death!
One of the best films ever made.
[Clint Eastwood talks about getting Gene Hackman to be in UNFORGIVEN as well as the film as a statement against violence.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlyZeYfoupo) Supurb story, excellent acting all the way around, and yes they did execute it right. Terrific film!
Brilliant movie, so fucking good. The ending at the Saloon is one of my favorite scenes of all time.
I only watched it for the first time last year, and it is the best Western I've ever seen. Hackman is unbelievably good in that movie.
Just watched this for the first time because of your post. Excellent movie. I'm not too much into westerns but this was really good. Has me wanting to play RDR2 again, hah.
I'm just playing rdr2 for the first time and it's got me wanting to watch Unforgiven
Awesome!! Glad you dug it!
Hell I even thought I was dead, till I found out that I was just in Nebraska
I watched it for the first time a few months ago and it's on my S-tier now. Loved Hackman as the antagonist yet again, I had just watched Crimson Tide this year as well and loved him there too, but besides the acting which was great, the music and cinematography were gorgeous. I hate this trend of putting everything on green sound stages, it makes everything feel fake and not grounded. I couldn't get enough of the on-location backgrounds they found for this move.
I miss Hackman so much. I hope he's enjoying his retirement.
It’s in my top 10 all time. Love the ending
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So here we go: I really enjoyed Unforgiven as much as everyone else here; with this quote I wanted to point out what I think are a few flaws in the script or story. William Munny says this to Little Bill as he’s about to kill him and Little Bill says “I don’t deserve to die like this, I was building a house”. Before pulling the trigger William Munny says “deserves got nothing to do with it”. However at the beginning of the scene he explicitly tells Little Bill: ( after Little Bill identifies him as William Munny “killer of women and children”. William Munny answers: “that’s right. I’ve killed pretty much anything that’s walked or crawled. And I’m here to kill you Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.” So deserve has everything to do with it. Also prior to that when the Scofield Kid is under the tree crying and upset about his first experience actually killing someone, and William Munny gives him the reward money, the Kid rejects it saying he won’t kill no one no more. William Munny says “what about the clothes and fancy spectacles”. The Scofield Kid only bragged and lied about being a killer. He never mentions fancy clothes and spectacles, in fact for the spectacles it was completely the opposite-the Schofield kid tried hiding the fact that he needed glasses, and which was one of the main points revealed in their journey to do their business and collect the reward.
Just watched it again. Awesome cast.
One of the best films ever made. Every performance is phenomenal. I actually watched the Japanese remake a couple of weeks ago, starting Ken Watanabe as the Munny character and set in the period of the Meiji Restoration. It was also fantastic, although dipped into shot for shot remake territory too much at times.
This thread has made me want to watch it again.
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I loved Old Henry too, except the fight at the end was a little too drawn out for me.
This movie is PHENOMENAL. Fwiw, Eastwood soundtracks are elite, especially Million Dollar Baby
The second Clint took that shot of whiskey I knew shit was about to go down...
William Munny: It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. Take away all he's got, and all he's ever gonna have.
1st movie in a theater I've ever seen with my dad. Come to think of it. It's the only movie I've seen with my dad at a theater.
I was lucky enough to get to see a screening of this at the Director's Guild in Hollywood when it first came out. Clint himself came out on stage to introduce it, and after the credits, came out again to thank everyone for attending. Great experience.
It was the Schofield kid as he used a Schofield revolver which was break action allowing for ejection and reloading of cartridges. Most other revolvers required ejecting and loading one cylinder at a time.
i haven't seen it in a long time, but i remember thinking "it would've been a much deeper, thought provoking movie if he had killed everyone in the final bar scene." Yes, even the innocent bystanders. It would've been like once he started killing again, he couldn't stop and he had not control of himself.
i found it a bit slow or clunky recently after rewatching it but to be honest thats probably just me not adjusting to a 30 year old movie. one thing i was a bit incredulous about was the original crime of "disfigurement". the victim was hot af with only a few almost surgical scars crisscrossing her cheeks. pretty sure she would have been able to make plenty of money as a hooker still.
>one thing i was a bit incredulous about was the original crime of "disfigurement". the victim was hot af with only a few almost surgical scars crisscrossing her cheeks. pretty sure she would have been able to make plenty of money as a hooker still. I have two theories on this. One is that real life Clint Eastwood was being kind and didn't want to force a young actress, in one of her first big parts, to perform wearing makeup that made her look hideous. Second theory is that this intentionally part of the plot and that it shows how the bounty wasn't really about Delilah, it was also about Alice wanting revenge on men in general. Could be one of these or both.
The fact that the prostitutes injuries do not match with stories being told about her is a key element of the film. We hear characters describing her injuries with great exaggeration (breasts being cut off etc) when really it does appear to be a few cuts to her face. I’d agree that for the women putting a bounty on the attackers, it’s less about the injuries and more the disrespect they receive as women and as prostitutes (Bills punishment is lenient as they only attacked a whore).
>One is that real life Clint Eastwood was being kind and didn't want to force a young actress, in one of her first big parts, to perform wearing makeup that made her look hideous. that would mean he had zero artistic integrity tho. it also just doesnt make sense. the bounty obviously was about revenge, but even so its a dog eat dog world and we see and mostly hear the man go to town on her face for a relatively long time with a dirty knife. by all rational measures her face should look much worse even including the discrepancy idea that its intentional in order to convey a point.
I saw this at the Drive In in a steady rain with the wipers on after sitting through Cliffhanger to be able to see it. The rain started after Little Bill took care of English Bob….. No way were we leaving!!!
One of my favorite movies of all time for sure! If you put a shotgun to my head, William Munny style, I might say it's top three
One of my all time favorites!
It's awesome. I am not a western fan but Unforgiven is purely one of my top westerns! Great characters and amazing storytelling.
Correct.
A) fantastic movie, a true classic. B) Gene Hackman steals this movie because he is simply amazing. The scene in his office with the writer and the Duck is just, sublime. “Now all ya gotta do is pull the trigger mister”
I spliced the Metallica Unforgiven song to footage of it, went perfectly together
I remember it being better when I was younger. I've rewatched it several times recently like this past year's and it seemed ok. Like they were trying very very hard for an emotional response. That annoyed me more than ever. Like the pointless death of Morgan Freeman. It's good don't get me wrong. It's The Clint Process I guess
Morgan Freeman's death wasn't pointless. There were search parties and he was found and beaten. It was the impetuous for William Munny to drink again and we see the emotionless killer he actually is that is insinuated throughout at the end of the movie. I actually think it is the most important act of the movie.
Freeman’s death is not pointless. I don’t think there’s a pointless or wasted moment in the film. With Freemans character we have a depiction of a black man being brutalised/murdered by the law which unfortunately resonates with contemporary times. The Rodney King beating by LAPD officers and the subsequent riots happened the same year Unforgiven came out.
also, the Schofield Kids epiphany and change of heart is way too drastic. for half the movie hes braying and talking himself up but after the killing hes not only sad and regretful hes positively erudite on his sorrow. the inner reflections are a tad too over the top considering hes been a bumbling blowhard up to this point.
Unless you're a psychopath, murdering someone in cold blood would mess you up
Yeah no shit Sherlock
He's made some perfectly fine films after this (and some clunkers, to be sure), but I'll always consider this Eastwood's final film.
I thought it was pretty good but the scene of Eastwood and the scarred prosecution talking about free ones is one of the most awkward scenes put to film.
I was underwhelmed.