When two rowdy, cruel cowboys beat up and disfigure a prostitute, a retired gunman, William Munny, his former partner, Ned (Morgan Freeman) and "The Schofield Kid" (Jaimz Woolvett) are hired by a madam to kill them for $500.00. Because times are hard, and he desperately is trying to support his children, Munny reluctantly leaves his farm and children, and hunts them down, along with the other gunmen out to do the deed and collect the bounty. The film builds to a showdown between an evil sheriff and the almost as evil gunman.

Eastwood and Hackman are particularly good. Eastwood's dour killer shows a depth and maturity that only comes with growth and age.

Hackman, as Little Bill Daggett, the evil, brutal sheriff, delivers one of the best of his smiling villain characters, a character type he's perfected over the years. Hackman, who won a Best Supporting Oscar for his performance, had to be strongly persuaded by Eastwood to take the role. It is said that the violence in the script originally turned Hackman off.

The rest of the cast is uniformly good. Morgan Freeman, as Ned Logan, and Francis Fisher, as Strawberry Alice, makes particularly strong impressions.

My favorite scene is Eastwood's climactic shoot out with Hackman. The action is quick and fatal, the room dark and crowded. The scene, playing like a morality fable set in the Old West, is powerful, with mythological undertones.

"Unforgiven" offers great filming of the stark Western scenes. Jack N. Green is the responsible party.

The film is a future classic because of the moving way the film examines the morality, and repercussions, of violence and death. "Unforgiven" is a great memorable Western. In addition to the specific story it's telling, it, in some ways, is a commentary on all film Westerns that have come before.

Eastwood has said the film IS in some ways a response, and a reflection, upon the ease with which characters he played in the past, like The Man With No Name and Dirty Harry, killed people without blinking. As Eastwood has matured as a filmmaker, so have his films, focusing on such personal subjects as jazz ("Bird") and romance for the older set, ("The Bridges of Madison County").