One of only three traditional westerns to win a best picture Oscar (after Cimarron and Dances with Wolves), this is Clint Eastwood’s finest meditation on the allure and the disease of American violence. The director casts himself as the veteran former outlaw William Munny in a film that spends two soulful, elegiac hours deconstructing the myth of the old western gunslinger before suddenly, contrarily, in the closing climactic scene, celebrating the myth of the old western gunslinger (Munny goes on a rampage of revenge).
It’s that internal tension that makes the movie masterful and endlessly influential. And it was indeed a cornerstone reference for Taylor Sheridan, the creator of the hit western TV series Yellowstone. Sheridan was so keen to pay homage to the film that he successfully lobbied Eastwood for permission to use the Unforgiven theme in his show’s first season. A better modern western has yet to be made.
★★★★★
15, 125min
At BFI Southbank and streaming on Prime Video and AppleTV+
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