William Munny: Clint Eastwood
Little Bill Daggett: Gene Hackman
Ned Logan: Morgan Freeman
English Bob: Richard Harris
The Schofield Kid: Jaimz Woolvett
W.W. Beauchamp: Saul Rubinek
Strawberry Alice: Frances Fisher
Delilah Fitzgerald: Anna Levine
Quick Mike: David Mucci
Davey Bunting: Rob Campbell
Skinny Dubois: Anthony James
This is the movie
Road to Perdition
wants to be when it grows up.
It's a fearsome tale of retribution and redemption on a grand scale. It is
unquestionably one of the greatest westerns ever made and one of the best
films of the 90s and it's finally available on a special edition DVD a few
years after a rather weak initial release.
It's the 1880s in the town of Big Whisky, Wyoming. When two cowhands
assault a prostitute, the sheriff, Little Bill Daggett, lets them off with
only a forfeit of horses instead of a more deserving punishment. Pooling
their money, the other prostitutes put out a $1000 bounty on the cowboys
lives. Meanwhile, William Munny struggles with a failing farm and two young
children. He is a reformed gunman, hellraiser and generally bad man, cured
of "wickedness" by his late wife.
When a young gunslinger shows up at his
farm asking Munny to partner him in killing the cowboys for a share of the
reward money, Munny claims he is no longer a killer. Finally relenting
since he has to do something for money to save his farm, the two head off
to Big Whisky along with Munny's old partner, Ned Logan, for some old
fashioned bounty hunting. This will set them on a collision course to a
confrontation with Little Bill that will leave few men standing at the end
of it.
The beauty of Unforgiven lies in Eastwood's deconstruction of the mythology
of the Wild West he himself helped create in his spaghetti westerns with
Leone. Gunfighters were not indestructible superheroes who could shoot four
men dead in the blink of an eye. Killing a man was a dirty, difficult
business that required a cool head more than a fast hand. Every act of
violence had consequences and repercussions and precipitated further acts
of violence. There are no heroes or villains depicted here and this is
Unforgiven's true power. We're encouraged to side with Munny because of
Little Bill's methods of law enforcement, but he is simply a lawman who
believes unequivocally in keeping the peace in his town by any means
necessary, while Munny is by no means a saint. As Munny himself so ably
puts it, "Deserve's got nuthin' to do with it".
The acting varies from the very good to the truly exceptional. Eastwood
gives his best-ever performance, a far cry from his typical action man
roles. Freeman has never given a bad performance in his life and is as
classy as ever, while Harris proves yet again that when he's not playing in
cheesy rubbish, he really can act. Blowing them all away though is Hackman,
who is staggeringly good. At turns brutal and sadistic yet wickedly
humorous, he brings incredible depth and conviction to the part.
Visually this is often a very dark film, full of night scenes and shadows,
but the presentation here is excellent, with strong blacks and browns.
There are also plenty bright daytime scenes depicting the stunning
landscapes and these also look superb. A first rate transfer.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track is also of a high standard. While mostly
focused on the central dialogue speaker, there are some lovely ambient
sounds like rainfall and insects from the rears and the gunfire
reproduction is very impressive.
There's a solid, if variable, selection of extras which begins with an
informative if not especially entertaining commentary from Eastwood
biographer Richard Schickel. Then there are four featurettes: All on
Accounta Pullin' a Trigger (22 mins) includes a nice selection of recently
filmed interviews with Eastwood, Hackman and writer David Peoples on the
themes and aspirations of the film, but is padded with a ridiculous amount
of clips from the movie; Making Unforgiven (24 mins) is an on set account
that includes interviews and behind the scenes footage and gives a good
view of Eastwood at work; Eastwood - A Star (16 mins) explores Clint's
career through clips and interviews and a cheesy voiceover and is really
rather weak.
The best of the bunch is the 68 minute documentary, Eastwood on Eastwood.
Made by Schickel and narrated by John Cusack, it's a thorough biography of
Clint's life and career from his early days in the army and his first small
roles through his cycle of films, and is only marred by the obvious ad
breaks for American TV - "When Eastwood on Eastwood returns" .....
"We now return to Eastwood on Eastwood" etc. Otherwise, well worth a look.
An unusual extra is the inclusion of an episode of the 50s TV series,
Maverick, which is fair enough if you like that sort of thing. Finally,
there's the standard theatrical trailer.
Overall, what more could you want than one of the finest films ever made,
looking and sounding better than it ever has on home video, backed up by a
decent slew of extras? The bottom line is, unless you plain just don't like
films, there is absolutely no excuse for missing this.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
