FAQ

Three gunfighters -- the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), Will Munny (Clint Eastwood), and Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) -- arrive in Big Whiskey, Wyoming to seek a $1,000 reward for killing Quick Mike (David Mucci) and Davey Bunting (Rob Campbell), two cowboys who disfigured Delilah Fitzgerald (Anna Thomson), one of the prostitutes at the whorehouse run by Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher). Killing Mike and Davey-Boy turns out to be easy compared to dealing with Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), sheriff of Big Whiskey and an ex-gunfighter himself.

Unforgiven is an original screenplay by American screenwriter David Webb Peoples. However, Peoples has admitted that his screenplay was inspired by American author Glendon Swarthout's book The Shootist (1975), a story about an aging gunman with cancer.

Considering that David Webb Peoples' screenplay was inspired by The Shootist, which featured a main character loosely based on John Wesley Hardin (1853-1895), the most prolific killer in the West, it's possible that Peoples had Hardin in mind when he created William Munny. Another outlaw that has been mentioned as a possible model for Munny is Cullen Baker.

It reads: 'She was a comely young woman and not without prospects. Therefore it was heartbreaking to her mother that she would enter into marriage with William Munny, a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. When she died, it was not by his hands as her mother might have expected, but of smallpox. That was 1878.'

When Will finds out that Ned is dead, having been tortured by Daggett, he takes several swigs of the Kid's whiskey and rides back into Big Whiskey, after sending the Kid and the money back to Kansas. He finds that Ned's body has been placed in a coffin and propped up outside of Greeley's with a sign saying, 'This is what happens to assassins around here.' Inside, he finds Daggett rounding up the posse he intends to pursue Munny and the Kid. Will asks who owns the place. When Skinny Dubois (Anthony James), owner of the whorehouse, admits to having bought the place from Greeley, Will shoots him Ior 'decorating his saloon with my friend.' Will then turns on Daggett, fulling intending to shoot him, but his shotgun misfires. Daggett orders his posse to kill Munny, but Will pulls out the Kid's Scofield and guns him down, along with several posse members. 'Any man don't want to get killed better clear out the back,' Will says, and the rest of posse scatters. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek) tries to interview him, but Will drives him out of the saloon. He hears Daggett loading up to fire and shoots him again. 'I'll see you in hell, William Munny,' he says. 'Yeah,' Will replies and shoots again. As he rides out of town, Will shouts out that he'll be back to kill everyone if Ned isn't buried properly or if another whore is harmed. In the final scene, Will is shown back in Kansas, standing near the grave of his wife. A written epilogue says, 'Some years later, Mrs Ansonia Feathers made the arduous journey to Hodgeman County to visit the last resting place of her only daughter. William Munny had long since disappeared with the children...some said to San Francisco where it was rumored he prospered in dry goods. And there was nothing on the marker to explain to Mrs Feathers why her only daughter had married a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.'

There are usually gunfights in most movies about the Old West, but viewers who have seen Unforgiven often name the following as among their favorite classic gunfighter movies, many of them classics: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), The Gunfighter (1950), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) (Once Upon a Time in the West), Pale Rider (1985), The Shootist (1976), Destry Rides Again (1939), The Magnificent Seven (1960), Hour of the Gun (1967), My Darling Clementine (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), Law and Order (1932), Tombstone (1993), and Shane (1953).