[z3n]

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.

[Rockingham]

Unforgiven is accurate in conveying a sense of the West as lawless in being minimally policed but obsessed by justice in that victims often sought justice themselves. That led to all sorts of complications, errors, and attempts at revenge and counter-revenge, often fueled by alcohol.

There were many gunmen in the West, but few of them were skilled as killers. And those that were skilled killers were often mythologized and their flaws and quirks concealed, as by Ned Buntline in Unforgiven and in real life. Eastwood there displayed the key attribute of a skilled gunman in being utterly fearless and steely when it came to killing, taking direct and unwavering deadly aim at his adversaries. That is harder to do than it may seem.

In addition, as Unforgiven shows, the post-Civil War West was increasingly permeated by rail, telegraph, print media, and professional live entertainment. It was not a land of remote desert settlements with the towering mesas beloved by John Ford, but was a loose network of boomtowns based on mining and cattle yards with a rail head. As Unforgiven shows, those boomtowns were rife with trouble generated by lack of honest law enforcement and gambling, saloons, and prostitution.