Funny thing, killin' a man. You take away everything he's got and everything he's gonna have.
Quality - 3/5
Enjoyablity - 4/5
I freely admit that I am not a huge Clint Eastwood fan either the tough as nails gunfighter actor or the most recent incarnation of crotchety director. That being said, this movie is pretty cool. It accomplishes something that's pretty hard to pull off in the "Western" genre, a breath of originality. The only other movie that I can compare this to is (the far superior) "The Ox-Bow Incident". In both movies, the viewer is asked to question their moral views and sense of justice. What is very unique about this movie is the plethora of seemingly random things thrown in to allow for character development and symbolism. While watching the movie, it teetered on the border of a jumbled mess for a while until Eastwood was able to barely able to bring it all back together. Gene Hackman's performance was definitely worthy of his Oscar as the sheriff attempting to rebuild a house and his image as a lawful man both end up in failure. While Morgan Freeman also gave a solid supporting performance, the one thing I couldn't quite understand was why no one made a fuss about a "colored" man with a gun in the all white town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming in 1880. Still, an all-around solid film rife with rewatchable nuggets of non-violence symbolism.
No comments:
Post a Comment