Unforgiven

Clint Eastwood’s masterwork reloaded the Western for a new era and gave Gene Hackman one of his most emblematic roles. As Big Whiskey’s sadistic sheriff, he burns with folksy menace and corruption, the perfect foil to Eastwood’s hollowed-out ex-killer, drawn reluctantly into violence alongside a quietly devastating Morgan Freeman. Winner of four Academy Awards including best picture, director, and supporting actor for Hackman, Unforgiven strips the genre of its romance and finds something starker in its place. Shot in windswept Alberta and scored with mournful restraint, it plays like a last word on the American gunslinger, and the brutal cost of every act of violence. “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”