War Handwavium

This is the War Handwavium score for “Unforgiven”, the 1992 movie starring Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman.

Total War Handwavium Score: +7 points

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105695/

NOTE: !!!!SPOILERS!!!!

No times are given. Didn’t have a DVD. The amount of violence is small enough that it’s pretty easy to track.

+2 points: The movie starts with two men Quick Mike and Davey Bunting, in a brothel. Quick Mike starts cutting up a prostitute’s face, Delilah Fitzgerald, because she “gave a giggle” when she saw how small his penis is. Davey Bunting hears yelling, comes into the room, and tries to stop Quick Mike. The owner of the brothel, Skinny Dubois, comes in and puts an end to it by brandishing a pistol.

The Sheriff, Little Bill Daggett, gives the men a fine. They are to provide the owner of the brothel with 7 ponies next spring. The prostitutes want them hanged, or at least whipped. The prostitutes decide to come up with a thousand dollar reward to anyone who will kill Quick Mike and Davey Bunting.

The first to attempt to collect is English Bob. He comes into town. The sheriff knows him and he and his posse surround English Bob and force him to surrender his guns. Then Sheriff Little Bob Dagget beats English Bob bloody and unconscious.

+5 pointless display of evil. Sheriff’s beating of English Bob.

The Schofield Kid, William Munny, and Ned Logan show up in town to collect the reward. The Sheriff confronts William Munny in the bar, beats him up, and kicks him out of town.

-2 William gets beaten by Sheriff.

William, Ned, and the kid go after Davey. Ned shoots at him, but misses and hits horse. Davey’s leg is crushed. Ned can’t finish him off. William takes the rifle and shoots Davey.

+3 William shoots Davey.

Ned realizes he can’t go through with it and rides out of town. William and the kid stay to go after the second cowboy and collect the reward. Friends of Davey catch Ned and we are told they beat him up, and then they turn him over to the sheriff.

Sheriff Dagget whips Ned in jail. Tries to get information, such as the name of his two accomplices. Dagget shows that he is whipping Ned more out of sadism than anything else. Ned gives false information.

-10 realistic portrayal of torture.

William and the Kid keep an eye on where Quick Mike is hiding. They wait till he goes out to to go the outhouse. The kid shoots Quick Mike.

+3 the Kid shoots Quick Mike.

The Kid then tells William that it was the first time he ever killed anyone. The Kid had been talking trash the whole movie up to this point. Now that he’s actually killed a man, he’s got the shakes, and got a pile of regret.

William and the Kid collect the reward.

We’re told that the Sheriff heard that Quick Mike is dead, and that he tortured Ned to death, not because the information would have done any good, but out of vengeance. As William put it, the Sheriff killed Ned for what William and the Kid did.

-10 realistic portrayal of torture.

William rides back into town. Ned’s body is on display in a coffin in front of the brothel. William kills the owner of the brothel for using Ned’s body as decoration. William then kills Sheriff Little Bill and 4 other men.

+18 William kills 6 men

summary:

When “Unforgiven” came out, it was hailed as being a realistic portrayal of violence and killing. The score, in my opinion, essentially reflects that accuracy. It shows torture being used not for information, but for vengeance. It shows gunmen English Bob and Sheriff Little Bill Dagget as being legends in their own minds, both of them lie to the writer W.W. Beauchamp.

Of all the main characters, none are searching for justice. The prostitutes want vengeance. The sheriff wants peace through visciousness. And William gets that he’s just killing for money and that ‘we all got it coming’.

Clint Eastwood preaches a moral of the failings of violence with this movie. And he walks the walk, not just talks the talk. The movie doesn’t preach against violence while glorifying violence. The movie preaches against violence while showing violence without any handwavium to pretty it up. Torture is shown honestly, brutally. The movie has a total body count of less than 10.

While something like “Watchmen” tries to have a moral to the story of the pointlessness of violence, it tells that moral while showing us a world where torture repeatedly works, where Rorsharch never kills an innocent man, and where vigilantes get to beat up black hat paper targets in dark alleyways.

Contrast this to “Unforgiven” where the movie “tells” us that violence is pointless at the same time it “shows” us a world in which violence is not some guiltfree indulgence.

“Unforgiven” won Oscars for best picture, best director, best supporting actor, and best editing. It also had nominations for best actor, best cinematography, and best original screenplay.

The movie itself has some issues, mainly that it’s longer than it needs be. At 2 hours and 11 minutes, the movie suffered from needless characters, namely the whole thing with the writer Beauchamp wasn’t needed for the plot, and some scenes could have been shortened, and all together, that probably could have cut the movie down to an hour and a half.

I don’t think “Unforgiven” won all those awards and nominations strictly for being the best movie. I think “Unforgiven” won all those awards and nominations because people recognized on some level that “Unforgiven” was showing us and telling us an honest story about the realities of violence.

Whatever the reason for the awards, “Unforgiven” is one of the lowest scoring “War Handwavium” stories that centers around violence that I’ve done. And I think that score reflects that the movie not only talked the talk about violence, but walked the walked. It told us and it showed us violence for what it is.

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