Unforgiven

Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: August 7, 1992

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

85	METASCORE Universal acclaim based on 34 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Julie Salamon

It's powerful entertainment. [22 Sept 1992, p.A16(E)]

Bradley Gibson

As great as the script and cinematography are (they are both unassailable), the real magic of Unforgiven is in the performances. Read full review

100

Danny King

Unforgiven is a stark western in slow motion, obsessed with reflection, not action. Read full review

100

Chuck Bowen

Unforgiven brought the revisionist revenge film into the 1990s and, by extension, the 21st century Read full review

100

Kathleen Carroll

Unforgiven is a high-caliber movie, a gripping and haunting work of art that should finally establish Eastwood as one of America’s best directors. Read full review

100

The TelegraphMartin Chilton

Unforgiven is dedicated to "Don" (Siegel) and "Sergio" (Leone) and it is a sombre, insightful, genre-reinventing western, directed by a filmmaker acutely aware of the western’s history, its limitations and the dubious truths of its legends. Read full review

Stephen Hunter

Only in its final minutes does it somewhat squander its grip on the moral imagination, in a climax that seems oddly to undercut all that's come before and return us to the hallowed sense of violence as cleansing which so animates the world's true killers. Read full review

Gene Siskel

Individual scenes work, but the movie seems overstuffed-why is the Harris character necessary-and halting. Read full review

100

EmpireAngie Errigo

Altogether, this is as fine a piece of craftsmanship as one could expect of Eastwood, with Hackman and I Freeman's performances standing out, and given the sombre tone there are entertaining surprises and even some good laughs to be had. Read full review

James Berardinelli

One of Unforgiven's assets is the way it overturns conventions, taking the man who is typically the hero and making him the villain, while transforming the traditional bad guy into a sympathetic protagonist. Read full review

100

Time Out LondonGeoff Andrew

A magnificent movie that transcends its familiar tale of a reformed gunman forced by circumstance to resume his violent ways. Read full review

100

Roger Ebert

The film reflects a passing era even in its visual style. Read full review

John Hartl

The characters in Clint Eastwood's dark, rugged, perversely funny new Western are so seriously compromised that their flaws almost add up to a running gag. Read full review

100

Duane Byrge

Like a shooter whose skill allows him to take careful aim with a rifle rather than going for the easy splatter of a buckshot, director Eastwood's big picture is suredly calibrated: He points your eye to the tiniest specs, the most telling and powerful parts of this moral panorama. Read full review

David Sterritt

Plays out its drama with enough old-fashioned sobriety to lend the proceedings a classical air, offering the comfort of familiarity rather than the thrill of discovery. [13 Aug 1992] Read full review

Mike Clark

It's the actor/director's best movie - and the best Western by anybody in over 20 years. [7 Aug 1992]

100

Kenneth Turan

Simultaneously heroic and nihilistic, reeking of myth but modern as they come, it is a Western for those who know and chrish the form, a film that resonates with the spirit of films past while staking out a territory quite its own. [7 Aug 1992] Read full review

100

Todd McCarthy

Clint Eastwood has crafted a tense, hard-edged, superbly dramatic yarn that is also an exceedingly intelligent meditation on the West, its myths and its heroes. Read full review

100

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

The cast is universally strong. Hackman, Freeman and Harris don't do anything they haven't done before, but the roles suit their personae to a degree where they approach archetypal status. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

Though the movie is riddled with memorable scenes of violence, its pace is slow -- too slow. It has an epic sprawl, but it's not an epic. It's more like a bloated fairy tale. [7 Aug 1992]

100

Dave Kehr

This dark, melancholic film is a reminder -- never more necessary than now -- of what the American cinema is capable of, in the way of expressing a mature, morally complex and challenging view of the world. [7 Aug 1992] Read full review

Hal Hinson

If Eastwood had any emotional depth as an actor, the character's anguish might come through. Read full review

100

Peter Travers

Unforgiven is the most provocative western of Eastwood's career, and with Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris along for the ride, it's also the most potently acted. Read full review

Stanley Kauffmann

At the last, we're left with a film that tries to doll up a conventional genre with hints of depth, hoping to disguise the cross-dressing by putting it in the shape of an epic. Murnau, Mizoguchi, Ford, even you authors of the Book of Genesis, rest easy. [12 Oct 1992]

Desson Thomson

Exults in the hard-riding romanticism of classic Westerns, but it takes revisionist stock too. It dismounts at places usually left in the dust -- the oppressed lot of women, the loneliness of untended children, adult illiteracy and the horrible last moments of the dying. Read full review

100

Richard Corliss

Unforgiven questions the rules of a macho genre, summing up and maybe atoning for the flinty violence that made Eastwood famous. [10 Aug 1992] Read full review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

As a moral reconsideration of the role of violence in previous Eastwood films, this is strong and sure, and characters who play against genre expectations give the film a provocative aftertaste. The only limitation, really, is that the picture hasn't much dramatic urgency apart from its revisionist context. Read full review

Jay Scott

Each character in David Webb Peoples' dense, unexpectedly stately, non- violent script (the inevitable gore is employed sparingly) is treated with that same, somewhat distanced clarity. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

As enjoyable as most of Unforgiven is, Eastwood's shades-of-gray moralism feels like a whitewash. Read full review

Film.comJohn Hartl

If Unforgiven occasionally overstates its case, this is the best work Eastwood has done as a director since The Outlaw Josey Wales 16 years ago.

100

Louis Black

But in the genre, as both a movie and a conscious addition to the ongoing celluloid Western mythology, the film is a masterpiece, a stunning and awe-inspiring statement. Read full review

EmpireRob Fraser

It is the last great Western ever made, and it will always remain so. Read full review

100

Michael Sragow

Under its leathery hide is a genuine compulsion to de-romanticize Western gunfighting. Every bullet in this movie matters, and by the end Munny's alcohol-fuelled, satanic purposefulness is shocking: in the climax, even his choice of victims has a crazy excess. [10 Aug 1992, p.70]

Vincent Canby

Unforgiven... never quite fulfills the expectations it so carefully sets up. It doesn't exactly deny them, but the bloody confrontations that end the film appear to be purposely muted, more effective theoretically than dramatically. Read full review