There have been a growing number of revisionist westerns that challenge the mythology of the Old West, but this is the best and the delicious irony is that it was produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and stars him in the leading role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is not the young, confident cowboy that Eastwood portrayed as ‘The man with no name’ in the “Dollar” trilogy or as the “High Plains Drifter” or the Pale Rider”. Instead this is aged Will Munney, a widower and teetotaller with two young children trying to eke out a living as a farmer with diseased hogs, a one-time cold and callous killer who these days struggles to mount a horse or shoot straight with a pistol. Persuaded, for the money, to seek a bounty, he doesn’t expect to encounter the cruel sheriff of the town of Little Whiskey, ‘Little Bill’ Daggett (Gene Hackman).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the story unfolds, we are repeatedly reminded aurally and visually that killing is not easy or guilt-free even in the Wild West. As reformed and repentant Will Munney puts it:\u00a0“It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.”<\/em>\u00a0The film was nominated for no less than nine Academy Awards and won Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood and Best Supporting Actor for Hackman. The cast also starred Morgan Freeman and Robert Harris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There have been a growing number of revisionist westerns that challenge the mythology of the Old West, but this is the best and the delicious irony is that it was produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and stars him in the leading role. This is not the young, confident cowboy that Eastwood portrayed as ‘The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30204,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30203\/revisions\/30204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}