The Clint Eastwood movie that makes “people stop me in the street”
Having caught his big break in a western, gone on to become the defining face of its spaghettified offshoot, and then mastered its revisionist evolution, it goes without saying there’s one genre Clint Eastwood is always going to be associated with more than most.
If it wasn’t for John Wayne he’d be the medium’s single most iconic on-screen presence, but that’s still legendary company to be in. He may have notched countless iconic roles and tackled everything from action and drama to period pieces and romance, but roaming the vast plains of the American West will always be intrinsically linked to Eastwood as both a performer and a filmmaker.
Unforgiven might be the very best of the bunch, and it’s an indisputable classic that won him Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, but according to the man himself, it isn’t the one that makes passers-by go out of their way to stop him in the street and lavish with undying admiration.
Instead, that honour falls to The Outlaw Josey Wales, the phenomenal 1976 story that marked his fifth feature as a director. With shades of Unforgiven almost a decade and a half before it existed, the Western deconstructs both the conventions of the genre and Eastwood’s persona within it to staggering effect, creating a masterpiece that doesn’t get talked about anywhere near often enough as one of his best.
“When people stop me in the street, it tends to be about Josey Wales,” he admitted to Empire. Drastically undervaluing its legacy, the star casually remarked that “they seem to like that one”. Getting held up on his daily errands may have convinced him to revisit the film and see what all the fuss is about, too, with Eastwood having embarked on a recent rewatch and confirmed that “it still holds up”.
The post-Civil War revenge tale finds Eastwood’s title character watching his wife and child brutally murdered at the hands of Union forces. Joining the Confederacy to play the long game of retribution, Wales tries to create a new life for himself when the conflict ends, but the bounty on his head repeatedly draws him back into the thick of the action without ever forgetting his sworn promise to ensure the nefarious Captain Terrill dies by his hand. Death and despair follows him everywhere he goes, but some vows need to be kept.
Even though he was already an experienced director by that point, Eastwood nonetheless referred to The Outlaw Josey Wales as “the first script I really liked”. That appreciation of the material is apparent in every frame, and with the greatest of respect to Play Misty for Me, High Plains Drifter, Breezy, and The Eiger Sanction, it was comfortably the best by far.