Unforgiven

The culmination of more than three decades spent in the saddle, Eastwood finally lays his iconic screen persona of the lone gunslinger to rest in his masterful deconstruction of the classic western. The once-feared outlaw William Munny is coaxed into action one last time, when a prostitute is disfigured by a disgruntled patron and a bounty is offered for his murder. On arrival in the frontier town of Big Whiskey, Munny comes face to face with the town’s sadistic sheriff, a brilliantly loathsome Hackman, in a role that would inform much of his career from this point forward. Brutal, downbeat, and defiantly unheroic, Unforgiven sits proudly as one of Hollywood’s great revisionist westerns, and the last word from one of the genre’s true giants.

Film talk with Bryan Chang