Unforgiven is a 1992 American revisionist grim Western film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and written by David Peoples. The film portrays William Munny, an aging outlaw and killer who takes on one more job years after he had turned to farming. The film stars Eastwood in the lead role, with Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris. Eastwood stated that the film would be his last Western for fear of repeating himself or imitating someone else’s work
After escaping death by the skin of her teeth, the horribly disfigured prostitute, Delilah Fitzgerald, and her appalled and equally furious co-workers summon up the courage to seek retribution in 1880s Wyoming’s dangerous town of Big Whiskey. With a hefty bounty on the perpetrators’ heads, triggered by the tough Sheriff “Little Bill” Daggett’s insufficient sense of justice, the infamous former outlaw and now destitute Kansas hog farmer, William Munny, embarks on a murderous last mission to find the men behind the hideous crime. Along with his old partner-in-crime, Ned Logan, and the brash but inexperienced young gunman, the “Schofield Kid”, Munny enters a perilous world he has renounced many years ago, knowing that he walks right into a deadly trap; however, he still needs to find a way to raise his motherless children. Now, blood demands blood.
Eastwood dedicated this grim western to directors and mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. In 2004, Unforgiven was added to the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
In 2004, Unforgiven was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthecically significant” by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked Peoples’ script for Unforgiven as the 30th greatest ever written.
