Unforgiven

Director: Clint Eastwood

1992 / 131min / 35mm

Recognition as a filmmaker didn’t come easily to Eastwood, but who could deny the accomplishment of this, his final Western, which sums up a full career of reflections on American violence, and exhibits a great relish in undermining its director/star’s imperious screen persona, introducing the onetime Man with No Name as a failed hog farmer, chasing around his ornery porkers and falling on his ass in their slops. Alongside Clint’s out-of-retirement desperado the stacked cast includes Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris, and Best Supporting Actor Gene Hackman, whose use of “The Duck of Death” as a put-down is a thing of beauty.