Top Westerns: 4. Unforgiven

08-07-2008 09:50

At number four in our top Western's countdown if Clint Eastwood's 1992 release Unforgiven, as well as being considered a classic of the genre the film also revitalised the Western which had seen it's popularity fade.

Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman play retired, down-on-their-luck outlaws who pick up their guns one last time to collect a bounty offered by the vengeful prostitutes of the remote Wyoming town of Big Whiskey.

Disgusted by the punishment of losing several ponies dealt out by Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett to a cowboy who had slashed the face of a prostitute Big Whiskey prostitutes, led by fierce Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher), take justice into their own hands and put a 1000 bounty on the lives of the perpetrators.

Gunslinger the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett)turns to notorious outlaw William Munny (Eastwood) to go and collect the bounty, but Munny left that life behind for the sake of his late wife.

But Munny's financial struggle forces him to re-think and the pair convince clean-living friend Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) to go along with them.

But Sheriff little Bill has no intention of letting the outlaws disrupt the law of his town and Munny must contend with his new moral code in the face of revisiting the life he left behind.

Dedicated to Eastwood's former directors and mentors Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, who he worked with on the likes of The Good the Bad and the Ugly, as the film was a hit with the critics and did well at the box office.