Best Picture Oscar winner Unforgiven.
My first viewing of this Oscar winning film, and my first thought is why haven’t I seen this fantastic film before? I really cannot answer that question but that’s what I kept thinking throughout watching and especially at the end. It really was just fantastic, and truly deserved to win an Oscar for best picture.
Retired William Munny (Clint Eastwood) takes one last job after a young man The Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) reminds him of his former killing days. With his partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) they attempt and successful track down two cowboys who attacked a young prostitute scarring her face and body. A reward is up for grabs to the people or person who kill these two cowboys. As the story goes on William is fighting with his demons on the past, while missing his deceased wife who turned his life around.
I did find William’s whole battling with his horse rather amusing. As it wouldnt let him get on every time he tried to. I suppose little moments as this lighten the mood, but some of the exchanges between William and Ned were also comical but in such a good well written way.
On going at the same time William and Ned are tracking across the country, Little Bill (Gene Hackman) is the Sheriff of the town where the attack on the prostitute took place. He did not properly punish the two cowboys in an appropriate manner. The first confrontation scene between William and Little Bill is just fantastic. William has a fever and Little Bill just beats him up and lets he crawl out. But William defiantly gets his revenge in the end. When Ned loses his nerve and can no longer shoot, its then up to William who at this point, slowly begins a backward pedal on all of the soul searching in which he had done over the years to change his ways. But when he finds out that Ned was tortured to death by Little Bill, this immediately makes William drink and then go after Little Bill. During this The Schofield Kid who we find out is short sighted and lied about killing 5 men. He shot dead the second cowboy and decides hes nothing like William and will never kill again.
William is battling with his demons throughout the film for things he has done in the past. It is not until the final scene that we discover he used to kill women and children. The fact that he then had a wife and two children makes it more distressing to that he had to live with his past everyday and with Eastwood’s brilliant acting you can feel the pain from William.
The other reason why I was so shocked that I had not yet watched this film was with being such a big fan of “Million Dollar Baby” and wondering how I could miss this film with fantastic scenes between Eastwood and Freeman. They really do have such an amazing chemistry on screen, acting off each other.
Gene Hackman really blew me away, he was just fantastically evil and such a great actor. He really did deserve the best supporting actor Oscar for his performance as Little Bill. This film should defiantly be on everyones must see list if they haven’t already seen it. I had never heard of or seen Jaimz Woolvett in any other film before watching this, but have to say I was very impressed with his performance and holding his own against such great actors like Eastwood and Freeman.
Lastly I must admit that I have never been a big fan of Westerns but this film has really changed my opinion on that genre and I intend on watching a lot more Westerns now.
