....killing a man.

You take away all he's got and all he's every gonna have......

We all have it coming kid."

The best western ever made and there was not one good guy character in the movie...

quote:

originally posted by Blume9mm:
The best western ever made...

Should be proceeded by “IMO.” For whatever the reason, I love Westerns, I’m a fan of Clint Eastwood; never cared much for this movie.

Carry on.

Well, sir, you are a cowardly son of a bitch! You just shot an unarmed man!

Well, he should have armed himself if he's going to decorate his saloon with my friend.

"Duck....I says"

“Talking about The Queen again, Bob? On INDEPENDENCE DAY?!?”

Hot, aint it?

"He's no carpenter"

Clyde, you have three pistols but you've only got one arm.

would you like a free one?

"I don't deserve this... to die like this. I was building a house."

Shit and fried eggs.

"You better bury Ned right!... Better not cut up, nor otherwise harm no whores... or I'll come back and kill every one of you sons of bitches."

"Who's the owner of this establishment?"

Who's the owner of this shit hole?

The ongoing thread about the most American of movies- I think the question is unanswerable for a number of reasons, but if pressed for an answer, I'd have to say Unforgiven, and to be perfectly honest, I can't tell you exactly why.

I notice that in the film thread, someone said The Searchers, and I guess I say Unforgiven for essentially the same reasons.
The Western genre is certainly the most American of genres. The Searchers is a monumental film, certainly in the top ten of great American films, and from the greatest American director, the master, John Ford.

Eastwood's film is starkly realistic and it is has a melancholy and unsatisfying ending, but there's something alluring in its bleakness. And as Blume9mm indicated, the characters are not romanticized- none of them.

It seems appropriate that a film like Unforgiven would come along so late in the genre, well past the peak of postwar era. Once all the mythology of the West had played out and once all the romantic notions became trite, once all of that was stripped away, then we could get Unforgiven. It's not just a great Western. It's a great Western that came out at the right time.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
...the characters are not romanticized- none of them.

There are no "good guys" in the film, just different shades of bad guys.
Every main character is an awful person in their own way.

Because of that and because it doesn't romanticize the west, there are those that argue, despite it's setting, characters and story line, that it's not a western. An interesting view point.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: cas,

"You don't have to worry kid. I aint gonna kill you. You're the only friend I've got."

My favorite scene in the movie, and maybe in any movie is when Clint hears about Ned getting killed and takes that long pull on the whiskey bottle. You see the thin veneer of civilization falling away and the growing sense of terror as the kid realizes what a "bad man" really is. It's a beautifully shot and acted scene that doesn't need a bit of dialogue to get it's point across.

I will admit, I didn't enjoy it so much the first time I watched it (can't say why...I just didn't)...but after the second and third time...I loved it...I felt the same after the Cohen brother's remake of True Grit...now to me both are classics!

I bought a dvd copy and loaned it, NIW and unopened to a friend, who watched it with his fucking girlfriend, whereupon they only watched it to the point where they shoot the cowboy that did the cutting, and the fucking girlfriend got bored with it. I nagged him for about a year straight to finish it, he never did. Never got my damn dvd back, either. That said, when he unloads the fucking girlfriend, he’ll have a good film he can watch once when he’s good and pissed off, and I’ll buy myself another in the meantime and not feel like it was wasted money.

It's been said the Unforgiven is not really a Western or is more of a non western in that it really does not follow the conventional themes of good guys and bad guys... that is what I got from the movie the first time I watched it... there were no good guys... every character in the movie was flawed.