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Reviews (1)
Apr 10, 2008
Eastwood's True Western Masterpiece!
2 of 2 found this helpful This is the western for which Clint Eastwood ought to have won his Oscars. Deservedly nominated for Best Picture in 1976, the buzz that year was with Copolla's second installment of the Godfather saga, and Eastwood's amazing cinematic masterpiece was ignored. That he was finally recognized for the much-inferior "Unforgiven" is a shameful irony.
The western genre was in decline by the 1970s and had largely devolved into cliché or cartoonish parody. The genius of Eastwood's vision was to take traditional western stereotypes and turn them on their heads, demythologize the rigidly black/white good-vs-evil Saturday morning matineé morality, and show us characters with real depth, real motivations and real inner conflicts; not always "good" or always "bad" but sometimes walking a fine line, driven to one side or the other by circumstances beyond one man's control.
The look of the film is gorgeous, showing us a smokey, autumnal by-gone world, sometimes crude, often gritty. It's not clear we'd want to live in such a time or place, but we are drawn in nonetheless. Wonderful acting, and a whole passel of great character actors (including the inimitable Chief Dan George) bring the story to vibrant life. There's plenty of action to keep the adrenaline flowing, and the story draws to a logical, satisfying, if artfully understated, conclusion. The score is also worthy of note; spare and expansive all at once, it ranks as one of the best to come out of the 70s.
Re-issued on DVD in 2001, this must-have western has been out of print for several years now and is becoming increasingly difficult to find except in some large, expensive anthology boxes. I'd recommend picking it up as soon as you can, especially since this DVD includes a fine "making of" documentary, an excellent companion to the film that you won't find anywhere else.
Buy it!