The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, 1976)
A Missouri farmer joins a Confederate guerrilla
unit and winds up on the run from the Union soldiers who murdered his family.
When one starts to gaze Westerns he’ll be headed
towards the Sergio Leone Man With No name trilogy. They defined Clint Eastwood has an actor with his
few words, his squinting eyes, and his face almost always in the shadow of his
hat. Leone’s films also forged Eastwood as a director and even if it is at a
more personal level, and one could states to a lesser one too, the Eastwood
Westerns have a lot to do with Leone’s.
Opening a lot like The
Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once
Upon A Time in The West, our central character Josey Wales (Eastwood) loses
his family to rape and murder by Red path Union soldiers. In his epic Western,
Wales seeks for revenge and inner peace. With the execution of his escape and
revenge Wales will encounter an aging Indian, a young Navajo woman, and a proud
family. This sometimes comic and other times tragic tale depicts how Eastwood
renders a Western that reminds the cinematic grandeur of Sergio Leone’s mise en
scène and storytelling with more modest means but still quite interesting. But,
it’s only bits and pieces that recalls Eastwood’s master and sadly it gives an
uneven film that doesn’t even comes close to his Unforgiven.
It is an archetype of Eastwood’s American Westerns and
it is also a film amongst the many directing credits that will populate his
filmography. It is above his average ones but the lack of color and sensibility
delivers a maladroit movie on the emotion side and it minimizes its length when
it comes to its appreciation. As a director, I find Eastwood to be a hit or
miss crafter and I prefer him as an actor under the lead of a Don Siegel or a Sergio
Leone. The quantity of films he directed can be explained by his fast execution
of the shooting of scenes and a very methodic director. He is, in fact, a very
efficient director and he seems to have endless energy when it comes to work
ethics. Those are qualities producers appreciate, and he is more often than not
a sure shot at the box office.
Besides its flaws, The
Outlaw Josey Wales stands as a very good Western starring one of the most
iconic Western icons of all time. Eastwood uses and develops many of his
recurrent themes with Josey Wales and
even if the film wasn’t nearly as great as Unforgiven
or Gran Torino, it still stands as
one of Eastwood’s Top 10 directorial efforts out of 35.
I agree with you about Eastwood as a director. Except for Unforgiven, I've always preferred his work as an actor. This is a decent film though, and its cool seeing Chief Dan George in it.
ReplyDeleteHe is more of a hit or miss director to me. As you said decent film but to me far from a real hit. Chief Dan George is indeed the best thing about the film.
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