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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 80.9%
Worth A Look: 16.85%
Average: 1.12%
Pretty Bad: 0%
Total Crap: 1.12%
2 reviews, 77 user ratings
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| Outlaw Josey Wales, The |
by Slyder
"Debunking the myths…"
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Clint Eastwood has always had a sure hand on Westerns ever since he debuted on Rawhide and did with Sergio Leone the Man with No Name Trilogy as well as several others. But Eastwood always worried about showing the awful truth amongst the genre which has been full of clichés ever since John Wayne rode off with his babe into the sunset in his wagon. It would all culminate with his masterful Unforgiven, but before that, he was well on his way with classics like High Plains Drifter and this little film, which stands as a high watermark in the revisionist western genre.Josey Wales (Eastwood) is a quiet southern farmer who falls victim of the brutal Redleg gang since his family’s raped and murdered and he’s left for dead. Hell-bent on revenge, Wales finds out that the Redleg gangs is with the Union Army of the North and with a group of farmers headed by “Bloody Bill” Anderson, he joins the Southern Cavalry and the Civil War. The North eventually wins the war over the south, and the farmers whom fought simply to defend their land are now the last of the holdouts. Wales though, has no one to go back to and his thirst for revenge will forever make him an outlaw. After being framed for the killing of the farmers, Wales flees while the Redleg Posse headed by Captain Terrill (Bill McKinney) and including Fletcher (John Vernon) the man who turned in the farmers and was betrayed and now is forced to ride with them, rallies after Wales.
Eastwood and cinematographer Bruce Surtees easily capture the rugged and wild nature of the West, shooting with dark depressed colors and epic-like faded landscapes. The film is long, clocking at 135 minutes, deliberately paced but never boring and it allows the script and characters to develop accordingly. Jerry Fielding’s score stands amongst the finest scores out there and helps the film in certain times when the pace threatens to deaden. Just as he did before with High Plains Drifter, Eastwood takes the premise he originally laid in the Man with No Name Triology as blueprint and further evolves it, bringing in significant new topics which help debunk several myths which the Western genre was once associated with. Thanks to screenwriters Sonia Chernus and the renowned Philip Kaufman (whom was originally to direct the film but fired by Eastwood), no more are the Northern Armies and Southern Armies over-generalized as the saviors of the republic and the evil racist barons respectively. Many people in the south, General Robert E. Lee included didn’t care or agreed with the Confederacy, yet they fought for the south to defend their land, and there will always be bandits whether it’s in the north or in the south.
The subject of the Indians is also touched once Wales meets Lone Wattie (Chief Dan George) and his telling of how the Indians were taken away from their land and resettled. This pretty much blows away the cliché of Indians being a bunch of ignorant savages as a whole new light is shed with these scenes as well as the scene in which Wales confronts Comanche chief Ten Bears (Will Sampson). Wales is also given quite an interesting development, ending somewhat between both a hero and anti-hero, mean with his guns but compelled to help people who have fallen in a similar situation like him (an Indian named Moonlight [Geraldine Keams] and a pair of Kansas natives Granny Sarah [Paula Trueman] and Laura Lee [Sondra Locke looking hotter than ever] whom later be Wales’s love interest); all of this in his quest to somewhat find peace of mind, but with his past haunting him and chasing him down, he never will find it, and he will always be at war until he finally settles it once and for all.In the end, this is a superbly crafted piece, featuring a strong direction, an engrossing, well-developed story and fine performances all around. The Outlaw Josey Wales is one of the finer Westerns of the genre and along with High Plains Drifter, a prelude to what was to come. 4.5-5
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1402&reviewer=235
originally posted: 09/26/04 08:26:59
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USA
02-Feb-1976 (PG)
UK
N/A
Australia
02-Jul-1976 (PG)
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