Posted on 08/14/2024 12:38:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Anyone who’s enjoyed a career as long as Clint Eastwood and been in as many great movies as he has during those seven decades in the limelight is inevitably going to notch a handful of masterpieces. Still, on either side of the camera, he’s never been better than The Outlaw Josey Wales.
The debate over which entry in Eastwood’s filmography can be called the greatest has raged for decades, which is understandable when he’s got Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy, Dirty Harry, Million Dollar Baby, Unforgiven, Escape from Alcatraz, High Plains Drifter, In the Line of Fire, Pale Rider, and many more under consideration.
However, a combination of how Eastwood weathered the storm of production to emerge on the other side with a classic, what the film meant to both his career as a whole and the entire western genre, and the way it subverted traditionalism in favour of something darker, dangerous, and ultimately more compelling elevates The Outlaw Josey Wales to the top of the pile.
The man himself revealed that it’s the one movie people stop him in the street to talk about more than any other, an impressive accolade in itself, looking at everything he’s achieved. It’s both a successor to the Dollars trilogy and the progenitor of Unforgiven in a way, and that duality makes it intrinsic to the man, the myth, and the legend of Eastwood in more ways than one. Of course, it helps that it’s a masterclass in atmosphere, technique, confidence, performance, and execution, too.
If it’s good enough for Morgan Freeman to name it as Eastwood’s best, then who’s to argue? It even led to a shift in the complexion of mainstream filmmaking to further enhance its legacy, with the leading man not even planning to direct until he instructed producer Robert Daley to fire Philip Kaufman, instigating a ruling – colloquially known as the ‘Eastwood Rule’ – from the Directors Guild of America that prohibits an actor or producer from giving a director their marching orders and stepping in to replace them.
That’s beside the point, but it made The Outlaw Josey Wales a monumental production nonetheless. Coming more than a decade after Dollars and a decade prior to Unforgiven, the movie finds Eastwood at a pivotal moment in his career and in the midst of his Dirty Harry run. He’d starred in traditional westerns and popularised the spaghettified version, but it was here where his penchant for hard-boiled revisionism came to the fore.
A revenge story in a figurative, literal, and existential sense, the sins of the title character’s past haunt him in the present and completely alter his future when vengeful union forces murder his wife and child. In his quest for retribution, Wales signs up with the Confederate Army, already differentiating the film from the pack by having the protagonist fight on the side everybody knows ended up losing.
He refuses to surrender in the aftermath of the Civil War, only to watch the same man who killed his family massacre his fellow soldiers. With a bounty on his head, what follows is a quest for redemption plagued by the unrelenting necessities of violence, making Wales much more than the standard one-note western protagonist who shoots the bad guys and lives happily ever after.
The scene where he grieves his family was the rawest display of emotion Eastwood had ever projected in any of his films, with Wales reduced to a tear-soaked wreck. Not out of the ordinary considering the circumstances, but that heart-on-the-sleeve mentality goes on to inform the rest of not just the narrative but the main character’s journey.
After losing his real family, he even ends up finding a surrogate clan, complicating what he envisioned to be a single-minded thirst for blood that couldn’t remain unquenched. While many would point to Unforgiven as being Eastwood’s version of John Ford and John Wayne’s The Searchers given what it means to him as an actor, filmmaker, and persona, The Outlaw Josey Wales fits that billing better.
Whereas his Academy Award-winning favourite was a swansong to the genre that made him who he is, when viewing his career as a whole The Outlaw Josey Wales is the definitive connective tissue. It was one part Man with No Name, one part Harry Callahan, and one part William Munny, all soaked in the baggage of its leading man as a performer and personality, marshalled with a director who knew they had to pull out all the stops to ensure their reputation wouldn’t be ruined by the coup that put him there in the first place.
That’s an incredible amount of pressure, especially when it sought to deconstruct the essence of the classic western and Eastwood’s place in its history, all while telling a resonant and complex story that didn’t skimp on the action or shootouts, either.
It was a hell of a balancing act, and it’s because he pulled it off so effortlessly and timelessly that The Outlaw Josey Wales is the best movie he’s ever been in on either side of the camera.
Unforgiven is the best western ever made. I have rarely seen a movie that can make its characters, good, bad and ugly, as real, flawed and complex people the way Eastwood’s Unforgiven did. Even Little Bill is rendered as a flawed man with real depth. You understand why Munny has every right to kill Little Bill even though you kinda feel bad for Little Bill. The perfect scene humanizing Little Bill is when his henchmen mock Little Bill’s self-built house and his carpentry skills.
People need to watch Gran Torino again.
Never thought CE was that good of an actor.
The female in ‘Play Misty for Me’ is the most memorable in that movie.
No way. Mediocre at best.
Unforgiven is great movie but I love the scope of Wales. It is like this giant epic that covers a really messed up period in US history.
There is no need to remind me why they call you hammerhead ;). Unforgiven is the best.
I don’t remember the exact lines but the “civilized” Indian convinces the squaw they acquired that he is some kind of Cherokee chieftain. LOL.
The worst movie Clint Eastwood made has to be the musical “Paint Your Wagon”.
Yes, Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin in a musical.
If you’ve never seen it, you must!
This looks like his first role and was uncredited.
Clint Eastwood’s 1st Movie Role in “Revenge of the Creature” 1955
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKCr5wvI4TY
Josey Wales is my #1 Clint movie. Didn’t like Unforgiven.
Fistful of Dollars was a good one.
Josey Wales: "When I get to liking somebody, they ain't around long."
Lone Watie: "I notice when you get to disliking somebody, they ain't around long, either."
I haven’t seen all of those, but “Dirty Harry” was my favorite. “A Perfect World” is not only his worst movie but one of the worst movies I have ever seen.
1955 -- next year, that will be 70 years ago!
It’s my favorite of his westerns
In Play Misty he really shines
But the actress is the scene stealer
Not hijack the OJW thread, but I tend to agree with you. Hackman did a great job with that character.
The writer guy was a little cliche but like you say, quirks and flaws; His flaw was cowardice, even though he sought out outlaws and heros, and his quirk was that he was gullible and believed English Bob’s stories.
English Bob’s flaw was arrogance, but his quirk was that he wasn’t as good as he thought, and I liked his Richard’s Harris’ performance (many would know him as Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator or the first [better] Dumbledore).
What I particularly enjoyed was the shoot-out at the end of the movie.
So, so, so many movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s had a formula which included fist fights, gun fights, and car chases, ALL OF WHICH were drawn out and strung out by repeated exchanges and changes in advantage. I roll my eyes at the fist fights in so many movies with dozens and dozens of hits, back and forth. Real lift fists between men don’t last long, even the ones that degrade into wrestling matches. BUT in Unforgiven, Munny got his revenge without any notable obstacle. Such a satisfying reprieve from anything done before where gunfights always had missed shots with ricochet sounds and so many backs-and-forths.
Bill Munny’s main flaw was alcholism. His quirk was that he was an amazing gunfighter when he was drunk.
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