Merciless

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Movie
German title Merciless
Original title Unforgiven
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1992
length 131 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Clint Eastwood
script David Webb Peoples
production Clint Eastwood
music Lennie Niehaus
Clint Eastwood
camera Jack N. Green
cut Joel Cox
occupation

Merciless (Original Title: Unforgiven ) is an American late west from 1992 , in which Clint Eastwood directed, produced the film and took on the lead role. Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman can also be seen in other roles . The film won four Academy Awards, including best film and best director. In 2013, The Unforgiven was a Japanese remake.

action

In the sleepy little town of Big Whiskey , two cowboys want to have fun with the prostitutes in the saloon . When the older one is mocked by one of the prostitutes, he beats her up and cuts her face with a knife. The sheriff refrains from prosecuting a couple of their horses to the salon owner. That is not enough for the prostitute; they spread the rumor that the victim's ears were cut off and the eyes gouged out, and they promise $ 1,000 to whoever kills the perpetrators.

A young, short-sighted would-be gunslinger who calls himself the Schofield Kid , wants to earn the money and asks the now aged and disaffected gunslinger William Munny to support him. He has renounced his previous criminal life, has become a good husband, father and pig farmer, but remains hapless: His wife dies at the age of 29, his farm is ravaged by swine fever and he is threatened with financial ruin. So Munny decides, although his shooting skills have meanwhile greatly diminished and he can only get into the saddle with great difficulty, to leave the house, yard and his two children for 14 days in order to meet the young man with his also frustrated former partner Ned Logan to collect the bounty .

Hardly after arriving in Big Whiskey, Munny, who had fallen ill with a fever and was weakened after a heavy thunderstorm, was taken over by Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett, who was also once a gunslinger and now, as a fanatic of order, wants to prevent revenge killings and at the same time maintain his power over the small town , half beaten to death and chased out of town. Another well-known killer, called English Bob , who was also after the reward, had previously been brutally beaten up and disenchanted by Daggett by exposing the legends that surrounded him as mere myth to his biographer traveling with him.

After Munny has recovered, he and his two companions track down the younger of the two wanted cowboys at work. Munny, no longer as accurate as before, ambushed one of them with a shot in the stomach, from which he died in agony.

Logan realizes that the life of a gunslinger is finally over for him. He leaves the group and rides home. On the way, however, he is picked up by Daggett's people and taken to Big Whiskey. In order to find out the identity and whereabouts of Logan's partners, the sheriff whips him until Logan succumbs to his injuries. Little Bill displays his body in the street in front of the saloon as a chilling example.

Kid has since found the second cowboy with Munny's help and shot him while he was sitting defenseless on the toilet. When Munny learns of Logan's death while one of the prostitutes is handing out the promised reward, he picks up the bottle, turns back into the old drunkard and gunslinger, and rides back into town to take revenge for his friend's death. Kid, on the other hand, is still in the shock of becoming a murderer for the first time, and is sent home by Munny.

At night and in torrential rain, Munny meets the sheriff and his assistants in the saloon. There is a showdown. Munny instigates a massacre that also kills Little Bill, and leaves town to return to his children and leave his ranch forever.

Reviews

source rating
Rotten tomatoes
critic
audience
Metacritic
critic
audience
IMDb

“Clint Eastwood's revisionist western revives the well-known structures in order to lead them to a demythologizing view of violence and its consequences. Less formal than interesting because of the thematic perspective. "

- Lexicon of international film

“Clint Eastwood creates a nuanced analysis of the emergence and spread of violence, skillfully breaking up Western clichés with bitter irony. Not only the successful presentation of a topic, but also the demythologizing reflection of a film genre. "

- Heyne Film Yearbook 1993.

" Unforgiven lets the once wild west end in a torrential, seemingly endless rainy night in which violence is no longer a regenerative force, but only destructive."

- Norbert Grob, Bernd Kiefer : Film genres: Western, Reclam 2003.

Awards

The film won four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Clint Eastwood), Best Supporting Role (Gene Hackman), and Best Editing (Joel Cox). He was also nominated in the categories of best leading role, best camera, best equipment, best original script and for best sound.

At the Golden Globe Awards ceremony , Clint Eastwood triumphed as best director and Gene Hackman as best supporting actor. The film was also nominated for Best Drama and Best Screenplay.

The film was nominated six times at the BAFTA Awards , including a. as the best film, for the best director or the best script. Only Gene Hackman won the Best Supporting Actor award. Gene Hackman received the coveted NYFCC Award for Best Supporting Actor. The film won four awards at the NSFC Awards , in the categories of film, screenplay, director and supporting actor. The LAFCA Awards gave prizes in the same categories to the film and also the prize for best film.

Mercilessly received numerous other prizes and nominations, for example at the Kinema Junpo Awards , London Critics Circle Film Awards , Sant Jordi Awards or Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards .

The American Film Institute sees Merciless as one of the 100 best American films (# 68). In 2004 he was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress . The film also reached number four in the American Film Institute's selection of the ten best westerns of all time.

The Wiesbaden film evaluation agency awarded the rating “valuable”.

Others

In the credits you can see a small dedication to “Sergio and Don”; Sergio Leone and Don Siegel , Eastwood's late mentors at the beginning of his career as a director.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b [1] at Rotten Tomatoes , accessed on October 31, 2014
  2. ↑ a b [2] at Metacritic , accessed on October 31, 2014
  3. ↑ Unforgiven in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  4. ↑ Merciless. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  5. ↑ Merciless on fbw-filmbassy.com