Unforgiven
Academy Award × 4·National Film Registry
Rent/Purchase
William Munny is a retired, once-ruthless killer turned gentle widower and hog farmer. To help support his two motherless children, he accepts one last bounty-hunter mission to find the men who brutalized a prostitute. Joined by his former partner and a cocky greenhorn, he takes on a corrupt sheriff.
What critics thought
Widely regarded as one of the finest Westerns ever made, Unforgiven earns near-universal admiration for Eastwood's unflinching examination of violence, myth, and moral decay — using the genre's own conventions against itself. The main point of contention at the time of release was structural: even some sympathetic critics felt the film ran long and loaded itself with characters, like Richard Harris's English Bob, who never intersect with the central story.
“the finest classical Western to come along since perhaps John Ford's 1956 The Searchers”
Jack Methews·Los Angeles Times
“Eastwood's meditation on age, repute, courage, heroism—on all those burdens he has been carrying with such grace for decades”
Richard Corliss·Time
Genres
Drama, Western
Cast & Crew
DirectorClint Eastwood
StarringClint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Jaimz Woolvett, Richard Harris
ComposerLennie Niehaus
Unforgiven
Academy Award × 4·National Film Registry
William Munny is a retired, once-ruthless killer turned gentle widower and hog farmer. To help support his two motherless children, he accepts one last bounty-hunter mission to find the men who brutalized a prostitute. Joined by his former partner and a cocky greenhorn, he takes on a corrupt sheriff.
What critics thought
Widely regarded as one of the finest Westerns ever made, Unforgiven earns near-universal admiration for Eastwood's unflinching examination of violence, myth, and moral decay — using the genre's own conventions against itself. The main point of contention at the time of release was structural: even some sympathetic critics felt the film ran long and loaded itself with characters, like Richard Harris's English Bob, who never intersect with the central story.
“the finest classical Western to come along since perhaps John Ford's 1956 The Searchers”
Jack Methews·Los Angeles Times
“Eastwood's meditation on age, repute, courage, heroism—on all those burdens he has been carrying with such grace for decades”
Richard Corliss·Time
Genres
Drama, Western
Cast & Crew
DirectorClint Eastwood
StarringClint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Jaimz Woolvett, Richard Harris
ComposerLennie Niehaus
Rent/Purchase