ViewGuide

Created Sep 15, 2007 12:48AM PST • Edited Feb 03, 2018 12:17AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   Just as Goodfellas is the ne plus ultra of mob movies, Unforgiven is the apotheosis of Westerns. In classic Western form the movie endorses the ethos of the lone righteous man doing what needs done, while at the same time baldly debunking the glorification of gunfighters in the Wild West. Top Dog Western star Clint Eastwood commands the center of the movie on screen and behind the camera, painting Unforgiven as an elegy for his career in Westerns and for the genre itself.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Not only Clint, but also Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman at the top of their games. As great actors playing off one another goes, it gets no better than this.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Pithy, memorable dialogue – “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.” – and gritty visuals make this feel like the real thang.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Perfect 5.0

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Just as Star Wars introduced space ships that looked like they’d been used and abused, Unforgiven presents a Wild West with the glamor and shine rubbed off. Perhaps this wasn’t the first Western to do so – The Wild Bunch comes to mind – but it still felt fresh, different and never better in Unforgiven.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.7

    Not so much sex shown, but described in what was done to the whores of Big Whiskey. Ain’t nice, what they done. And though it is really violence and not actually sex, sexual violence pretty much always defaults back to violence.

17. Sex Titillating 2.1

18. Violence Brutal 3.1

19. Rudeness Profane 3.0

21. Reality

    Glib 1.5

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.9

23. Biological Glib 1.7

24. Physical Natural 1.0