Set in Wyoming in 1881 during the sunset years of the Wild West, 1992's Unforgiven was directed by and starred Clint Eastwood, and is generally considered to be the towering achievement of his twilight years. Eastwood plays William Munny, once a vicious, whisky-swilling bounty hunter, brought to heel by his marriage to a good woman. When she dies, he must raise two children and run a hog farm alone, something which we see him make a comically poor fist of doing. Then, in a twist of fate, a young outlaw called the Schofield Kid trots up to his farm and invites him to collect on a $1,000 reward raised by a group of prostitutes. However, Clint must not only face up to his own somewhat rusty skills as a gunslinger, but also to genial-but-psychopathic lawman Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman in superb form). Unforgiven ultimately conforms to the expectations of the genre, while subverting quite a few of them on the way. There's brooding on the consequences of violence ("It's a hell of a thing to kill a man"), as Munny's ineptitude with a rifle is matched by his feelings of penitence for his younger wrongdoings. Finally, however, Eastwood casts aside age and inhibition in a chillingly ruthless shootout, his powers miraculously (improbably?) restored, in what could also be seen as an assertion on the part of the ageing Eastwood of his own potency as a major player in Hollywood. --David Stubbs
The Man with no Name Trilogy A Fistful of DollarsFor a Few Dollars MoreWhen two rival bounty hunters (Oscar Winner Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef) learn they're both after the same murderous bandit they join forces in hopes of bringing him to justice. But all is not as it seems in the hard-hitting second installment of Sergio Leone's trilogy starring Eastwood as the famed Man With No Name. Special Features: The Christopher Frayling Archives: For a few Dollars More Feature Commentary by Noted Film Historian - Sir Christopher Frayling A New Standard (Frayling on For a Few Dollars More) Back for More (Clint Eastwood remembers For a Few Dollars More) Tre Voci: For a few Dollars More For a Few Dollars More: The Original American Release Version Location Comparisons 12 Radio spots Original Theatrical Trailer The Good the Bad and the Ugly
Whether or not you can sympathise with its fascistic/vigilante approach to law enforcement, Dirty Harry (directed by star Clint Eastwood's longtime friend and directorial mentor, Don Siegel) is one hell of an American cop thriller. The movie makes evocative use of its San Francisco locations as cop Harry Callahan (Eastwood) tracks the elusive "Scorpio killer" who has been terrorising the city by the Bay. As the psychopath's trail grows hotter, Harry becomes increasingly impatient and intolerant of the frustrating obstacles (departmental red tape, individuals' civil rights) that he feels are keeping him from doing his job. A characteristically taut and tense piece of filmmaking from Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Shootist, Escape from Alcatraz), it also remains a fascinating slice of American pop culture. It was a big hit (followed by four sequels) that obviously reflected--or exploited--the almost obsessive or paranoid fears and frustrations many Americans felt about crime in the streets. At a time when "law and order" was a familiar slogan for political candidates, Harry Callahan may have represented neither, but from his point of view his job was simple: stop criminals. To him that end justified any means he deemed necessary. --Jim Emerson
This is the movie that launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Before director Sergio Leone picked him out, Clint had played only a few bit parts in features plus his role as Rowdy Yates in the TV Western series Rawhide. Leone cast him for his stillness and physical presence, famously remarking that when Michelangelo was asked what he had seen in a particular block of marble, he said Moses, but that what he, Leone, saw in Eastwood was just that, a block of marble. Leone also claimed that it was he who gave the character his trademark cigar and poncho, though Eastwood has said he brought his own wardrobe to Italy. Whoever takes credit, A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari in Italian) was an extraordinary success when launched in Italy in 1964. Eastwood had to wait longer for it to be a hit in the USA. The film was based on Kurosawa's 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo, but Leone had forgotten to clear the copyright. Eventually a deal was done, but A Fistful of Dollars was not released in the USA until 1967. It scored an equally resounding success, as did its sequels in the Dollar Trilogy, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The advertising campaign promoted Eastwood's character, laconic, amoral, dangerous, as The Man with No Name (though in the film he's clearly referred to as Joe), and audiences loved the film's refreshing new take on the Western genre. Gone are the pieties about making the streets safe for women and children (women are virtually absent from the Trilogy). Instead it's every man for himself. Striking too was a new emphasis on violence, with stylised, almost balletic gunfights and baroque touches such as Eastwood's armoured breastplate. The popularity of the Dollars films had a marked influence on the Hollywood Western, for example Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, but its most enduring legacy is Clint Eastwood himself, still in action at the age of 70. --Edward Buscombe
The Searchers: John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards an ex-Confederate who sets out to find his niece captured by Comanches who massacred his family. He won't surrender to hunger thirst the elements or loneliness. And in his obsessive quest Ethan finds something unexpected: his own humanity. One of the most influential movies ever made. Unforgiven: an exciting modern classic that rode off with four 1992 Academy Awards. Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman play retired down-on-their-luck outlaws who pick up their guns one last time to collect a bounty offered by the vengeful prostitutes of the remote Wyoming town of Big Whiskey: Richard Harris is an ill-fated interloper a colourful killer-for-hire called English Bob. Gene Hackman is the sly and brutal local sheriff whose brand of Law enforcement ranges from unconventional to ruthless. Big trouble is coming to Big Whiskey...
This two-disc Special Edition presents the restored, extended English-language version of Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, now clocking in at almost three hours (actually 171 minutes on this Region 2 DVD as a result of the faster frames-per-second ratio of the PAL format). It includes some 14 minutes of previously cut scenes, with both Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach returning to the editing suite in 2003 to add their voices to scenes that had never before been dubbed into English (Wallach's voice is noticeably that of a much older man in these additional sequences). The extra material contains nothing of vital importance, but it's good to have the movie returned to pretty much the way Leone originally wanted it. The anamorphic widescreen picture is now also accompanied by a handsome Dolby 5.1 soundtrack, making this the most complete and satisfactory version so far released. Film historian Richard Schickel provides an authoritative and engaging commentary on Disc 1. On the second disc there are featurettes on Leone's West (20 mins), The Leone Style (24 mins), Reconstructing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (11 mins) and a documentary about the historical background of the Sibley campaign, The Man Who Lost the Civil War (15 mins). In addition, there's a two-part appreciation of composer Ennio Morricone, Il Maestro, by film-music expert John Burlinghame. Tuco's extended torture scene can be found here, along with a reconstruction of the fragmentary "Socorro Sequence". In short, exemplary bonus features that will satisfy every Leone aficionado. --Mark Walker
During the Civil War, Union "Redlegs" attack Southerner Josey Wales's dirt farm and wipe out his family. Seeking vengeance, Wales throws in with a company of Reb guerrillas. Tagged as a renegade after the surrender, he flees west into the vastness of the Indian Territories, where, quite unintentionally, he finds himself cast as the straight-shooting paterfamilias of an ever-growing, spectacularly motley community of misfits and castaways. Which is to say, Josey's personal quest for survival and something like peace of mind evolves into a funky, multicultural allegory of the healing of America. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Clint Eastwood's 31st film as an actor, 20th as international star and 5th as director, was the first to win him widespread respect. Critics had grumbled when the producer-star replaced Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) in the director's chair a week into shooting. They ended up cheering when Eastwood delivered both his most sympathetic performance to date and--with the heroic collaboration of cinematographer Bruce Surtees--an impressive Panavision epic that stresses the scruffiness, rather than the scenic splendors, of frontier life. Though it's been honoured with a place in the National Film Registry, Josey Wales is good, not great, Eastwood. The big-gun fetishism can get tiresome, and too many characters exist only to serve as six-gun (and at one point Gatling gun) fodder. But mostly the film is agreeably eccentric, and almost furtively sweet in spirit--a key transitional title in the Eastwood filmography, and one of his most entertaining. --Richard T. Jameson
Forced to spend time together for the first time in years, a father and daughter make new discoveries - revealing long-held truths about their past and present that could change the prospects for their future.
This first sequel to Dirty Harry was written by a couple of strong voices, writer-directors Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter) and John Milius (Farewell to the King). But that doesn't mean the film is particularly good. After Don Siegel's ferociously dark style in the first movie, Ted Post's blocky, television-ish direction in Magnum Force is a huge letdown. The story doesn't win any prizes, either. Eastwood's San Francisco detective Harry Callahan (apparently having retrieved his badge after throwing it away at the end of Dirty Harry) takes on a vigilante squad within the city's police force. David Soul is pretty convincing as the major spokesman for these right-wing avengers. Eastwood, on the other hand, had already turned Callahan from fascinating outsider in Siegel's film to purveyor of tough-guy shtick in this one. --Tom Keogh
Joe Kidd which concerns a land war in New Mexico at the turn of the century marks Clint Eastwood at the top of his form as a western hero. Filmed in 1971 Kidd brings together a veteran western Director John Sturges the classic backdrop of the High Sierras the top notch acting skills of Robert Duvall and the rugged Eastwood as a ""hired gun"" who takes action based on his own particular sense of justice. And like a very classic western it has gunfights conflicts and a slam-bang f
Clint Eastwood stars as Earl Stone, a man in his 80s who is broke, alone, and facing foreclosure of his business when he is offered a job that simply requires him to drive. Easy enough, but, unbeknownst to Earl, he's just signed on as a drug courier for a Mexican cartel. He does well-so well, in fact, that his cargo increases exponentially, and Earl is assigned a handler. But he isn't the only one keeping tabs on Earl; the mysterious new drug mule has also hit the radar of hard-charging DEA agent Colin Bates. And even as his money problems become a thing of the past, Earl's past mistakes start to weigh heavily on him, and it's uncertain if he'll have time to right those wrongs before law enforcement, or the cartel's enforcers, catch up to him. Features: Making of The Mule: Nobody Runs Forever-Join actor/producer/director Clint Eastwood and the all-star cast and crew of The Mule as Eastwood makes his bold return to the big screen. Toby Keith Don't Let the Old Man In Music Video
Titles Comprise: Gran Torino: Clint Eastwood returns to the big screen as Walt Kowalski a cantankerous veteran of the Korean War who catches his young Hmong neighbour attempting to steal his cherished 1972 Gran Torino urging him to try and reform the boy of his burgeoning criminal ways. Flags of Our Fathers: February 1945. Even as victory in Europe was finally within reach the war in the Pacific raged on. One of the most crucial and bloodiest battles of the war was the struggle for the island of Iwo Jima which culminated with what would become one of the most iconic images in history: five Marines and a Navy corpsman raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi. The inspiring photo capturing that moment became a symbol of victory to a nation that had grown weary of war and made instant heroes of the six American soldiers at the base of the flag some of whom would die soon after never knowing that they had been immortalized. But the surviving flag raisers had no interest in being held up as symbols and did not consider themselves heroes; they wanted only to stay on the front with their brothers in arms who were fighting and dying without fanfare or glory. 'Flags of Our Fathers' is based on the bestselling book by James Bradley with Ron Powers which chronicled the battle of Iwo Jima and the fates of the flag raisers and some of their brothers in Easy Company. Letters from Iwo Jima: The island of Iwo Jima stands between the American military force and the home islands of Japan. Therefore the Imperial Japanese Army is desperate to prevent it from falling into American hands and providing a launching point for an invasion of Japan. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi is given command of the forces on the island and sets out to prepare for the imminent attack. General Kuribayashi however does not favor the rigid traditional approach recommended by his subordinates and resentment and resistance fester among his staff. In the lower echelons a young soldier Saigo a poor baker in civilian life strives with his friends to survive the harsh regime of the Japanese army itself all the while knowing that a fierce battle looms. When the American invasion begins both Kuribayashi and Saigo find strength honor courage and horrors beyond imagination. Mystic River: Three childhood friends - Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn) Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) and Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) - are thrust together as adults when Jimmy's 19 year old daughter is murdered. Clint Eastwood's powerhouse drama secured Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor Oscars for Sean Penn and Tim Robbins respectively at the 2004 Academy Awards. Unforgiven: an exciting modern classic that rode off with four 1992 Academy Awards. Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman play retired down-on-their-luck outlaws who pick up their guns one last time to collect a bounty offered by the vengeful prostitutes of the remote Wyoming town of Big Whiskey: Richard Harris is an ill-fated interloper a colourful killer-for-hire called English Bob. Gene Hackman is the sly and brutal local sheriff whose brand of Law enforcement ranges from unconventional to ruthless. Big trouble is coming to Big Whiskey...
Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) is a tough veteran Secret Service agent who has been plagued by feeling s of guilt and failure since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. As the agent on duty that fatal day Horrigan feels that he should have reacted more quickly and taken the bullet for the President. Thirty years later the current President of the United States is entering a re-election campaign and following a number of death threats Horrigan has been called in to assist in what should be a routine research operation. However when he discovers that a professional assassin and master of disguise (John Malkovich) has been tracking the President the assignment turns into a deadly game of cat and mouse. Leary uses his knowledge of the events in 1963 to mentally torture Horrigan in the ensuing psychological duel - a duel that will eventually put Horrigan 'In the Line of Fire'...
Clint Eastwood stars as Earl Stone, a man in his 80s who is broke, alone, and facing foreclosure of his business when he is offered a job that simply requires him to drive. Easy enough, but, unbeknownst to Earl, he's just signed on as a drug courier for a Mexican cartel. He does well-so well, in fact, that his cargo increases exponentially, and Earl is assigned a handler. But he isn't the only one keeping tabs on Earl; the mysterious new drug mule has also hit the radar of hard-charging DEA agent Colin Bates. And even as his money problems become a thing of the past, Earl's past mistakes start to weigh heavily on him, and it's uncertain if he'll have time to right those wrongs before law enforcement, or the cartel's enforcers, catch up to him. Features: Making of The Mule: Nobody Runs Forever-Join actor/producer/director Clint Eastwood and the all-star cast and crew of The Mule as Eastwood makes his bold return to the big screen. Toby Keith Don't Let the Old Man In Music Video
In 1873 Oklahoma, Jed Cooper (Oscar Winner Clint Eastwood), wrongly accused of being a rustler, is lynched by a crooked lawman (Ed Begley) and a band of vigilantes. But unbeknownst to his would-be killers, Cooper is still alive! After becoming a deputy marshal, the sly, iron-willed Cooper sets out after the vigilantes, hell-bent on justice – and vengeance – in this electrifying classic.
Dirty" Harry Callahan was one of the first screen characters to embody contemporary fears about crime--and the uncompromising response to it that much of the audience would liked to have seen. Clint Eastwood's laconic rogue cop became an instant screen icon; his catchphrases ("Do you feel lucky?", "Make my day") were and still are endlessly quoted, and he even inspired a futuristic comic-strip counterpart in the person of Judge Dredd. Made at the time when the real "Zodiac" serial killer was terrorising San Francisco, the original Dirty Harry struck a frighteningly realistic note in 1971: aside from Eastwood, director Don Siegel's taught, pacey direction, Lalo Schifrin's nervy jazz score and Andrew Robinson's cackling psycopath "Scorpio" all make a strong impact. Such was the film's success that it gave rise to no less than four sequels, none of which are its equal but all of which get by on the charisma of Eastwood's anti-hero, even when he's increasingly trapped by the character's one-dimensional persona. This five-disc box set contains all the "Harry" movies: Dirty Harry (1971); Magnum Force (1973, with David Soul as a vigilante bike cop); The Enforcer (1976, with Tyne "Lacey" Daly as Harry's new and reluctant partner); Sudden Impact (1983, the weakest of the lot costarring Eastwood's then-partner Sondra Locke) and The Dead Pool (1988, a surprisingly upbeat end to the series). --Mark Walker
A Fistful of DollarsThe First of the Spaghetti Westerns, A Fistful of Dollars became an instant cult hit. It also launched the film careers of Italian Writer/Director Sergio Leone, and a little known American television actor named Clint Eastwood. As the lean, cold-eyed cobra-quick gunfighter - Clint became the first of the 'anti heroes'. The cynical, enigmatic loner with a clouded past is the same character Eastwood fans have been savouring ever since. A fistful of Dollars is the western taken to the extreme - with unremitting violence, gritty realism and tongue-in-check humour. Leone's direction is taut and stylish, and the visuals are striking - from the breathtaking panoramas (in Spain) to the extreme close-ups of quivering lips and darting eyes before the shoot-out begins. And all are accented by renowned film composer Ennio morricone's quickly, haunting score. For a Few Dollars MoreClient Eastwood had proven so successful in his first foray into European Westerns with A Fistful of Dollars that a follow up sequel was inevitable. Superbly scripted by Luciano Vincenzoni, featuring an unforgettable alliance between ruthless gun-slingers Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, For a Few Dollars More tells the tale of a ruthless quest to track down the notorious bandit El Indio played by Gian Maria Volonte. The film is also noted for its array of weaponry, a veritable arsenal of rifles that become so startlingly influential in future westerns. Sergio Leone's direction is both violent and operatic and Ennio Morricone's atmospheric score keeps the tension taut as the action moves from jail breaks and holds up to spectacular gun battles. The Good, The Bad and The UglyThe Good, The Bad and The Ugly, written by Age-Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Leone is the third and last Western in Clint Eastwood's spaghetti trilogy. Director Sergio Leone subtitles for the upright puritan Protestant ethos, so familiar in Hollywood westerns, a seedy cynical standpoint towards death and morality, as a team of brutal bandits battle to unearth a fortune buried beneath an unmarked grave. Joining Clint War, filmed to resemble to the French battlefields of World War One, to end in the climatic Dance of death. Arguably the quintessential Italian Western, this 1966 film boasts a fine Ennio Morricoe score featuring a main theme that reached No.1 in the worlds pop charts. Hang 'em HighThey riddled him with bullets. They strung him up. They left him to die. But they made two fatal mistakes, they hung the wrong man... and they didn't finish the job. In his first American-made western, Clint Eastwood indelibly carves his niche as the quintessential tough guy - cool-headed, iron-willed and unrelenting in the pursuit of revenge. Oklahoma, 1873. Jed Cooper (Eastwood), mistaken for a rustler and killer, is lynched on the spot by crooked lawman Captain Wilson and a rampaging band of vigilantes. But as Wilson and his gang flee the scene, there's one very important detail they've overlooked: Cooper is still alive! Out for justice - and vengeance - Cooper takes on the job of deputy marshal... and, one by one, tracks down the nine men who 'done him wrong'.
Trapped by his image in 1976, Clint Eastwood resurrected his Dirty Harry character for a third go-round (out of a total of five) in The Enforcer, a potboiler of a story in which the San Francisco detective takes on a group of revolutionary kids. Tyne Daly costars as a female cop who partners with the reluctant Harry Callahan, and she does very well by a role created merely to underscore and articulate the hero's various virtues. It's a dull package all around, but inside the wrapping are good performances by the two leads. --Tom Keogh
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