Originally Posted by listopencil:
The Outlaw Josey Wales.
It's a good movie, but the idea behind it is completely flawed. After reading some actual history, for me the movie was never the same.
During the Missouri/Kansas border war, nobody on either side deliberately killed women and children. And they didn't rape women. Ever. It just didn't happen. Even Quantrill's raiders killed zero women and children when they sacked Lawrence. Even the women dying in the jail collapse that was the trigger event for Lawrence was an accident. Many of these guys would raid and pillage throughout the week and go to church on Sunday.
The redlegs would have stolen everything, burned down the buildings and killed Wales himself, but left the wife and son alive and unhurt in the wreckage.
Most, if not all, of the movies Eastwood did with his then girlfriend Sondra Locke had rape scenes in them. They must have had a kinky relationship. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Mennonite:
I've never known quite what to make of the opening and closing text of Unforgiven. The part about his wife and mother in law and all that.
I think the opening is just trying to establish that he was a changed man, had fully given up the outlaw life… “Claudia Feathers Munny died not by his hand, as her mother might have expected…”
And the end just kinda let you know that his escape was successful… “it was rumored that he prospered in dry goods in San Francisco” [Reply]
Originally Posted by Mennonite:
I've never known quite what to make of the opening and closing text of Unforgiven. The part about his wife and mother in law and all that.
I love Unforgiven and think it's the best western ever made, but it does have one serious plot issue. Why did the whores put out a bounty on Davey, the second cowboy? It made no sense. He had nothing to do with the stabbing, obviously didn't know the stabbing was going to happen, was in the next room when the attack started, and tried, along with the other hookers, to subdue Quick Mike. Yet he got judged and ultimately killed for it as if he'd been a participant. You'd think at some point he'd stand up and say "hey, I didn't have shit to do with any of this." But he never did.
Originally Posted by Frazod:
I love Unforgiven and think it's the best western ever made, but it does have one serious plot issue. Why did the whores put out a bounty on Davey, the second cowboy? It made no sense. He had nothing to do with the stabbing, obviously didn't know the stabbing was going to happen, was in the next room when the attack started, and tried, along with the other hookers, to subdue Quick Mike. Yet he got judged and ultimately killed for it as if he'd been a participant. You'd think at some point he'd stand up and say "hey, I didn't have shit to do with any of this." But he never did.
That was ****ed up.
That's a good point. It reminds me of something that I always wondered about Lonesome Dove - did Jake Spoon deserve to be hanged? Spoon wasn't a cold blooded killer and he didn't encourage or condone Dan and his buddies slaughtering the sodbusters, but he didn't do anything to stop it. Granted, despite his bluster he wasn't really a brave man and was genuinely convinced that he would be killed if he tried to stop the others. Was he morally obligated to do something even at the cost of his own life? Gus and Woodrow obviously thought so.
Compare that to Davey in Unforgiven. Now he might not have known that Quick Mike was a psycho when they went to the whorehouse, but he did by the time they left. And yet he was still willing to stick with him. Is there such a thing as guilt by association? Sometimes I think there is. [Reply]