#68 ‘Unforgiven’
Guns, Guilt, and the Revisionist Western That Still Can’t Quit Its Misogyny
Unforgiven (1992) is Clint Eastwood’s gravel-throated elegy to the Wild West—a somber, blood-soaked deconstruction of cowboy mythology where no one rides off into the sunset without dragging a corpse or two behind them. It’s brooding, self-aware, and beautifully shot, a film that tries to interrogate the sins of the genre while still indulging in just enough violence and masculine myth-making to keep the ghosts fed. But for all its grit and gravitas, let’s not pretend it isn’t still a story where women’s pain exists solely to motivate men’s redemption.
Eastwood plays William Munny, a reformed killer turned pig farmer who’s drawn back into violence for one last job: avenging a prostitute who was brutally mutilated by a cowboy who thought “no” was optional. The sheriff (Gene Hackman, electrifying in his cruelty) won’t punish the attacker. The law is corrupt. The women, led by a weary Frances Fisher, pool their money and put out a bounty. And just like that, Munny’s off again—haunted, reluctant, lethal.
This is where Unforgiven wants to break the Western mold. Munny isn’t cool. He’s broken. He vomits after his first kill. He stumbles. He shakes. He isn’t a hero—he’s a man who’s been running from his own legend, only to find it waiting with a loaded rifle. The violence is ugly, the consequences real, and the film makes sure you feel every gunshot like a moral reckoning.
But let’s talk about who gets to do the reckoning. Not the women. They start the plot, yes. But once the men show up, they’re shuffled to the sidelines—mourners, motivators, metaphors. The prostitute whose assault catalyzes everything? Barely speaks. Her body is defiled, her face slashed, and the film’s real question is: How do the men feel about it? The women may pay the bounty, but the emotional stakes belong entirely to the gunslingers.
The film positions itself as anti-violence, but it still fetishizes the last stand. When Munny finally snaps—truly, fully—he becomes the very myth the film pretends to critique. The climactic massacre in the saloon is framed as inevitable, righteous, and iconic. So much for moral ambiguity. In the end, violence doesn’t solve the problem—it just restores a masculine sense of order.
Unforgiven is a technical triumph. Jack Green’s cinematography is bleakly stunning. The score is minimal and mournful. Every performance hums with tension. But its revisionism only goes so far. It’s not that it questions the Western myth—it mourns the loss of it, as if decentering white male violence is a tragedy. There’s no real reckoning, just resignation.
3.5 out of 5 empty graves
(One for Eastwood’s raw stillness. One for Hackman’s menace. One for the cinematography. Half a star for daring to say the quiet part of the Western out loud. The missing stars? Left with the women whose trauma built the plot but never earned a name, a voice, or a shot of their own.)
