Unforgiven essays

Unforgiven essays In 1992, actor/director Clint Eastwood produced a Western called Unforgiven. He also directed and starred in the movie, receiving an Academy Award for the former and a nomination for the latter. The movie itself won the coveted Best Picture Award that year. It was a bit out of the norm for an Oscar winner, bleak and remorseless without the heroism and justice with which moviegoers have grown accustomed. It lacked the happy ending that makes people leave the theater beaming or, in some cases, even teary-eyed. What it was, however, was a brilliantly directed and edited glimpse of what the Old West might have really been like. There are no good guys or bad guys, only ordinary people with ordinary weaknesses. The title of the film undoubtedly refers to more than one man or one crime of violence (which the movie opens with) against a woman. This is a world without forgiveness, where so-called good and bad people are alike; all pulled back into some fundamental sin. The plot for Unforgiven centers on William Munny (Clint Eastwood), a former murderer and thief who, for the love of a good woman, gave up his former life to raise a family and make his living as a farmer. With his wife now dead and his farm failing, Will is reluctantly drawn back into his old ways by the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), a self-proclaimed killer who brings Munny word of a bounty being offered in the Wyoming town of Big Whisky. The bounty is on the heads of two cowboys who slashed the face of prostitute there, the womans co-workers have offered a reward for the deaths of the cowboy who did the cutting and his accomplice. Will initially declines the Kids offer, but later reevaluates his situation and teams up with his old partner in crime, Ned Logan, and they set off to join the Kid. The excursion will pit him against William Little Bill Dagget (Gene Hackman), the authoritarian sheriff of Big Whisky, as...