Clint Eastwood
Gli Spietati

" It's a hell of a thing, killing a man: you take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."

William Munny is a bad man. A real bastard, son of a bitch. He could kill you all: old men, women, children. But the now seasoned Munny has extinguished the spark of violence and blood in his icy gaze, having buried that fierce, ruthless killer long ago. He managed to rebuild a life in the shadow of a miserable farm, with his two small children, pigs, and chickens to take care of, despite his beloved wife dying of smallpox. The only one who managed to pull him from a past of cruel and feared killer, and from the drinking habit that often turned him into a 'beast' during robberies and getaways. The only person capable of redeeming him from the marked path of a heinous bandit. After years, the chance to return to his old ways will present itself to W. Munny in the form of a thousand dollars: the reward (to be shared with two other 'partners') for avenging a prostitute scarred and beaten by cowardly cowboys. That money means a lot for his children's future, and Munny (dusty from time and a 'normal' life) heads to Big Whiskey, Wyoming, with his old colored colleague Ned Logan (played by Morgan Freeman) and the young, inexperienced, and nearsighted gunslinger, Schofield Kid. In the small and quiet town, they find the authoritarian and sadistic sheriff Little Bill Daggett (a superb Gene Hackman, Oscar-awarded) waiting for them with his goons. It will be a bloodbath.

The twilight of the 'true' and dirty West, of the many (anti)heroes that crossed it and the falsely epic and moralistic portrait, full of stereotypes and folklore, of a world that is actually infamous and vile. A world in agony, tired and gloomy, in which the ex-bounty-killer Munny and the other 'survivors' drag themselves: all have shades of gray, nothing is black or white. No character is truly 'good', and none completely negative. The western epic, its aura passed down from stories and legendary figures, is a lie: even in the wild and 'mythical' West, violence was often senseless, and the romance of 'duels at high noon' or 'showdowns at the OK Corral' went to hell in the cowardice of petty and reprehensible figures. In the dark colors of vivid cinematography, in faces chiseled in stone, director Eastwood demystifies and definitively drops the curtain on the Western saga. Exemplary in this regard are the harsh lesson given by Little Bill to the famous gunslinger 'English' Bob (Richard Harris); and that of pure chronicle of the facts to the mediocre writer anxious to mythologize any squalid event. Perhaps Leone was the first to make a decisive U-turn on the classicism of the western tale, surely Peckinpah's 'The Wild Bunch' was a fundamental step in the process of anti-heroic and ultra-realistic revision of the old West. Clint Eastwood waits a few decades to portray, with the weight of the years upon him, William Munny and to direct 'Unforgiven'.

A bitter and lucid reflection, in the mud and dust of saloon-filled and endless prairies at sunset America. A film about violence, and its tragic consequences: there are no innocents in a world that doesn't forgive, life makes you spit out all the evil you have inside. People kill for little, for some money, for revenge, to survive, or to momentarily rid themselves of the demon around them. Supported by a magnificent cast, Clint signs a modern masterpiece of the most classical of cinematic genres; remembering both the 'subversive' and never complacent eye of his mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, and the immense and total breath in the infinite spaces, in the value of virile and supportive friendship from John Ford and Hawks. 'The Unforgiven' (those who are not forgiven, the original title) achieved great success upon its release in 1992, winning awards like the Golden Globe, National Film Critics Award, Director's Guild, and four Oscars from nine nominations (including Best Picture and Director).

Unforgettable are the characters of the great screenplay by David Webb Peoples: like Frances Fisher (at the time Eastwood's companion), who plays the tenacious brothel keeper, Strawberry Alice. And the sweet, immaculate gaze despite the incident, of Faith ('to believe' still when hope and dignity are trampled by the stronger), the prostitute victim of the uncontrolled rage and frustration of the two men. Nothing is gratuitous, pointlessly hagiographic in the scars of Munny's beating, in the blood that wets the face humiliated by the merciless law, in Big Whiskey, of English Bob and in the body battered with Daggett's tortures and beatings of the poor Ned Logan, and exhibited in a coffin as a barbaric and macabre warning to the 'killer' circulating around. A universe of lost souls adrift, the end of the Old World where honor had no precise rules, or had none at all. 'Motion pictures' by Neil Young would be the ideal farewell to the twilight tone of this tragic story (it was written for Carrie Snodgress, the Canadian rocker's partner in the Seventies, and actress in Eastwood's 'Pale Rider').

'Unforgiven' is the last, definitive Western film. That place where they would usually shoot you in the back. That place where the scarred face of a girl could be worth a few horses. A filthy place, committing a grave insult to William Munny was equivalent to sending you straight to Hell. It only took a bit of whiskey, and that spark would return to shine in his now impenetrable eyes. In his steady hand on the rifle. Because W. Munny is a bad man, and the heavy rain at night will not wash away your sins.