Since I started reviewing movies on March 16 with Citizen Kane I've only seen one movie newer than this - Schindler's List on March 28 and that's only a year newer.

As for this one, it's a western directed and produced by Clint Eastwood who is also the star. The only other western I've seen, A Fistful of Dollars also stars Eastwood and was directed by the legendary western director Sergio Leone. This movie tells the story of a prostitute who is assaulted by two men and she and her fellow prostitutes hire some assassins (Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, and Jaimz Woolvett) to kill the two men. The plot isn't all that complex but it's still pretty good once it gets going. There were a couple points that I didn't like early on namely Eastwood leaving his 2 kids at home by themselves who couldn't have been more than about 12 and 8 and the fact that Eastwood decided to go to begin with after having reformed himself and not killed anyone in 11 years. The first half drags at times, but the latter half is pretty dramatic and exciting.

In addition to the aforementioned actors, the film has Gene Hackman in a supporting role. He won best supporting actor and when he was on screen I guess he was good. The other actors aren't bad either although this film, like most westerns, isn't really dialogue-oriented and instead has a lot of action sequences and little profound dialogue so it's kind of hard to say much about the acting.

On a more significant level, the film deals with morality and the ugly aspects of the Old West. While it does glamorize killing people two an extent, some of the characters (I won't say whom) realize that killing people isn't as glorious as they once thought it was which leads to some interesting events. The film is also a eulogy in a sense to the western genre as there have been very few well-received westerns made since this film was released. While westerns were once perhaps the most popular genre of both film and television, that is no longer even close to being true.

While this wasn't great, it was rather enjoyable and serves as a fitting end to westerns. This won best picture although I didn't really get the sense that this was a best picture type of film but that's probably because I don't associate westerns with winning that particular award. The only other western I'm aware of that won best picture is Cimarron in 1931 and possibly Dances With Wolves if it counts as a western. This is worth seeing for fans of western films although I would venture that the earlier western films are better than this.

77/100
C+

UP NEXT: Enough with the new movies, time for a Gloria Swanson silent film, Sadie Thompson.

That's NOT a new movie.

It's like 16 years old...
Almost as old, if not OLDER than me.

Am I the only person alive who can't stand Clint Eastwood?

I give it a 67 myself

Eastwood did a series of Dirty Harry Films

Cool

I also seen Million Dollar Baby and enjoyed that but mostly because Hilary Swank was so good in it