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Unforgiven
Western / English / 1992
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
A Clint Eastwood movie high up on the MoFo 90s Top 100 list I haven't seen.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Horses, Pigs, Cows, casual references to killing chickens. A beautiful tapestry of abuse and exploitation in Western movies, you gotta love it.
I am frankly baffled that this movie was as successful as it was and as critically received as it was.
You have a Clint Eastwood Western... where the premise is Clint Eastwood is a washed up cowboy, an incompetent pig wrangler, a terrible shot, becomes violently ill at the first sight of rain, starts thinking he's going to die, is literally incapacitated for 3 days, hallucinating all sorts of shit...
And this is the ultra badass who's poached to merc a couple dudes who hacked up a prostitute's face.
Poached, mind you, by the most wannabe hardcore edeglord in a Western setting; some teenager who won't shut the **** up due in part to his comedically bad eyesight.
He's got his head poking out over the rocks in one scene where there are half a dozen guys shooting at him and he's just "Did you hit him?", "Did you kill him?", "Is he dead?".
Dude, if you can't ****ing see what's happening anyway, why the **** are you sticking your neck out?
Oh, but don't worry, you see we bring up the rear with a bit of class, a bit of quality; Morgan ****in' Freeman. He can at least shoot from a safe distance, so he'll basically be pulling all the weight of this three-man hit squad...
...at least until he chickens out at the literal first opportunity and bails, only to be killed offscreen a couple scenes later.
What the hell is this movie? I've seen ****ing Tombstone and this doesn't even hold a candle to it. Hell, Dirty Harry was better than this.
I suppose the whole idea is that Eastwood's character is supposed to have a comeback arc where he returns to shoot the sheriff, who's responsible for killing Freeman's character, despite only ever being an accomplice to Eastwood, and then arriving at some half-assed form of justice for the hooker that got slashed which Eastwood's character is entirely ignorant about...!?
But whatever, he comes back for revenge and is a total badass, right?
Nope.
He shoots one rando in the stomach with a shotgun, doesn't have a second slug, and conveniently squats to whip out his pistol and take out the entire bar that's shooting at him because apparently this world operates by 2D video game logic where crouching is the ultimate strat to dodge all projectiles.
I'm just trying to figure out what people like so much about this movie.
It's not Clint Eastwood being cool.
It's not Morgan Freeman being cool.
It's not the blind turbo edgelord pussy who won't shut the **** up.
It's not any sort of feminist message because of the prostitutes, surely.
And I can't imagine it's the barely comedic subplot of the writer trying to attach himself to any remotely threatening character to be their next autobiographer.
The music didn't stand out to me,
the cinematography didn't stand out to me...
at least the movie was decently paced and engaging, but are we seriously trumping up this movie that features such scenes as the Freddie Kreuger prostitute offering Eastwood a "free one" and then we have to suffer the meandering dialog of Eastwood having to explain that he's not rejecting her because she's a ghoul, but because he's still faithful to his wife?
UGH, gag me. Nevermind the nonsense of referring to the same thing as both "free" and an "advance".
Sloppin' Eastwood's dick is either free, or it's coming out of his paycheck, which is it? Make up your ****in' mind.
You can't even say Eastwood had any sort of appreciable redemption arc, this is like an anti-redemption arc. He went from being a straight-and-narrow pig farmer to getting his only friend killed in the pursuit of mercing a couple guys he had barely any information on in exchange for money... and then he just slaughters the law enforcement to boot.
Maybe 2nd Amendment fans just really like this movie, but it seemed to me that a fair amount of conflict could have been avoided if a few characters had just surrendered their guns on arrival to the town.
And why not anyway? The guys they're looking to kill aren't even in town!
It doesn't make any sense.
This movie was over 2 hours long, and at least it kept my attention, but especially with how much shameless animal exploitation is in this movie I was constantly checking to see how much time was left because I was seriously tempted to give it up.
Final Verdict: [Weak]
Unforgiven
Western / English / 1992
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
A Clint Eastwood movie high up on the MoFo 90s Top 100 list I haven't seen.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
"This old horse is getting even with me for the sins of my youth. In my youth, before I met your dear departed ma, I used to be weak and given to mistreating animals." - 200+ pound man clambering his fat ass onto a horse.
Horses, Pigs, Cows, casual references to killing chickens. A beautiful tapestry of abuse and exploitation in Western movies, you gotta love it.
I am frankly baffled that this movie was as successful as it was and as critically received as it was.
You have a Clint Eastwood Western... where the premise is Clint Eastwood is a washed up cowboy, an incompetent pig wrangler, a terrible shot, becomes violently ill at the first sight of rain, starts thinking he's going to die, is literally incapacitated for 3 days, hallucinating all sorts of shit...
And this is the ultra badass who's poached to merc a couple dudes who hacked up a prostitute's face.
Poached, mind you, by the most wannabe hardcore edeglord in a Western setting; some teenager who won't shut the **** up due in part to his comedically bad eyesight.
He's got his head poking out over the rocks in one scene where there are half a dozen guys shooting at him and he's just "Did you hit him?", "Did you kill him?", "Is he dead?".
Dude, if you can't ****ing see what's happening anyway, why the **** are you sticking your neck out?
Oh, but don't worry, you see we bring up the rear with a bit of class, a bit of quality; Morgan ****in' Freeman. He can at least shoot from a safe distance, so he'll basically be pulling all the weight of this three-man hit squad...
...at least until he chickens out at the literal first opportunity and bails, only to be killed offscreen a couple scenes later.
What the hell is this movie? I've seen ****ing Tombstone and this doesn't even hold a candle to it. Hell, Dirty Harry was better than this.
I suppose the whole idea is that Eastwood's character is supposed to have a comeback arc where he returns to shoot the sheriff, who's responsible for killing Freeman's character, despite only ever being an accomplice to Eastwood, and then arriving at some half-assed form of justice for the hooker that got slashed which Eastwood's character is entirely ignorant about...!?
But whatever, he comes back for revenge and is a total badass, right?
Nope.
He shoots one rando in the stomach with a shotgun, doesn't have a second slug, and conveniently squats to whip out his pistol and take out the entire bar that's shooting at him because apparently this world operates by 2D video game logic where crouching is the ultimate strat to dodge all projectiles.
I'm just trying to figure out what people like so much about this movie.
It's not Clint Eastwood being cool.
It's not Morgan Freeman being cool.
It's not the blind turbo edgelord pussy who won't shut the **** up.
It's not any sort of feminist message because of the prostitutes, surely.
And I can't imagine it's the barely comedic subplot of the writer trying to attach himself to any remotely threatening character to be their next autobiographer.
The music didn't stand out to me,
the cinematography didn't stand out to me...
at least the movie was decently paced and engaging, but are we seriously trumping up this movie that features such scenes as the Freddie Kreuger prostitute offering Eastwood a "free one" and then we have to suffer the meandering dialog of Eastwood having to explain that he's not rejecting her because she's a ghoul, but because he's still faithful to his wife?
UGH, gag me. Nevermind the nonsense of referring to the same thing as both "free" and an "advance".
Sloppin' Eastwood's dick is either free, or it's coming out of his paycheck, which is it? Make up your ****in' mind.
You can't even say Eastwood had any sort of appreciable redemption arc, this is like an anti-redemption arc. He went from being a straight-and-narrow pig farmer to getting his only friend killed in the pursuit of mercing a couple guys he had barely any information on in exchange for money... and then he just slaughters the law enforcement to boot.
Maybe 2nd Amendment fans just really like this movie, but it seemed to me that a fair amount of conflict could have been avoided if a few characters had just surrendered their guns on arrival to the town.
And why not anyway? The guys they're looking to kill aren't even in town!
It doesn't make any sense.
This movie was over 2 hours long, and at least it kept my attention, but especially with how much shameless animal exploitation is in this movie I was constantly checking to see how much time was left because I was seriously tempted to give it up.
Final Verdict: [Weak]