Essential Cinema: The Outlaw Josey Wales

Josey Wales doesn't have the same iconic status of Unforgiven, but it's no less of an important or fascinating film

Clint Eastwood was not only the last great Western star, but an actor-turned-director who would wring the last few great films out of the dying genre. That of course peaked in 1991 with Unforgiven, a script that he found in the 70s and sat on until he was old enough to play the role. It’s not surprising that he found that script in that incomparable film decade, given that he’d already directed two Westerns, films that quietly deconstructed the genre in the same way that Unforgiven did. The first was 1973’s High Plains Drifter, which brought the nihilism, pitch black humour, and exaggerated aesthetic of the Spaghetti Westerns he made with Sergio Leone to America. It’s a ludicrously entertaining and underrated flick that helped establish Eastwood as a filmmaker, but the film is also primarily rooted in Leone’s outsider vision of the American West.

In his 1976 follow up The Outlaw Josey Wales, Clint cemented his version of the Western for the first time. Though Josey Wales doesn’t have the same iconic status of Unforgiven or The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, it’s no less of an important or fascinating film, which marked the first time the Clint showed that the whole directing thing wasn’t just an ego-driven side project; this guy actually had some chops as a filmmaker.

The movie stars Eastwood as Josey Wales (obviously) and opens with his wife and children being brutally murdered by a band of renegade Union soldiers. Before the opening credits roll, the once decent man trains himself into a killer and joins up with a group of Confederate outlaws to kill anyone in the path of his revenge. Eventually he finds the people responsible, but only when the war is over and he is supposed to be surrendering to the men who ruined his life. Josey being a Clint antihero, he responds by jumping behind a machine gun and slaughtering as many of the soldiers he can and then flees before finishing the job. So, Clint starts roaming the West as a man alone, providing justice with a gun to those he meets along the way. So far, it’s standard Eastwood Western material from the era (albeit one with a more complicated psychological profile than earlier efforts). Then the movie starts to change. As Josey wanders the Western plains, he starts picking up a group of followers, ranging from some repressed Native Americans to a grandmother and daughter who he saves from a vicious rape. Josey begins to soften as he gathers the motely crew and considers settling down to form a community and give up his mercenary ways. Of course, those old Union soldiers haven’t forgotten about his machine gun days and with a bounty hunter on his heels, giving up violence might not be easy for Josey Wales.

Though Eastwood showed some skill behind the camera in previous directorial efforts going back to his debut Play Misty For Me (picked up from close collaborations with Sergio Leone and Don Siegel), The Outlaw Josey Wales marked a major step forward. Schooled in years of Westerns as a boyhood fan and genre star, he masterfully lenses an action epic as stylistically accomplished and thematically complex as anything to come before. Yet, in Clint’s typical way, the visual pyrotechnics and thoughtful asides almost feel tossed off. Those aspects resonate if you’re looking for them, while the movie could just as easily play as pure action entertainment if that isn’t of interest. Clint is of course a strong central presence as a performer, but thankfully isn’t a selfish actor/director trying to create a film dedicated to his own ego. He quite often gives over frame to a variety of interesting supporting players in a large ensemble. John Vernon steals the most scenes as a sympathetic bounty hunter on Wales’ heels and even though it’s hard to take actor seriously after his hysterically straight turn as the evil dean in Animal House, he gets enough amusing lines to flavor the role with comedy. The other major supporting player is Chief Dan George, a native man that Josey picks up on his travels who, in what seemed radical at the time, gets the chance to voice his frustration over the treatment of his people. The way the film treats the Native American characters was far more sensitive and understanding than typically seen in Hollywood and Westerns in that era, giving the The Outlaw Josey Wales another layer of genre deconstruction. Sometimes this material stretches on a little long for contemporary tastes, but Eastwood is far from a pretentious filmmaker and regularly undercuts the sentimentality with violence and humor.

Even though The Outlaw Josey Wales is first and foremost a spectacular slice of genre entertainment, Eastwood’s primary interest in the project seems to have been in tearing apart and reexamining his cold killer Western persona. Clint plays the calculated killer we’ve seen many times before, but not merely as the smirking archetype. The opening provides a believable basis for his merciless ways, while the gradually building community allows him to open up and return to being a normal man again (if only briefly). It finds a realistic setting and psychological profile for the type of film and character that made Eastwood a star, deepening and reimagining the possibilities of the genre in the process. That all may sound a little highfalutin for a cowboy picture, but its very much there amidst all the spectacular shootouts and set pieces. Eastwood connected with the material as a filmmaker in a way he never had before and emerged or more mature and polished director capable of taking on the more challenging projects he would attempt later in his career. If nothing else, The Outlaw Josey Wales is the first great project in the career of Clint Eastwood the director. Its reputation has grown over time, yet still remains a somewhat unheralded genre classic outside of the geekiest movie circles. In a way, when Josey Wales rides off at the end having grown out of his murdering period and actually seems interested in pursuing a normal life once more, he’s set to become the man who would grow old and return to violence in Unforgiven. The two films play like odd, mirrored companion pieces now, with Unforgiven deepening and expanding on the ideas Eastwood first explored in The Outlaw Josey Wales. If you have an appreciation for that 1991 masterpiece, this semi thematic prequel is not to be missed (Oh, and Clint kills people real good in it, too, if you like that sort of thing).

The Outlaw Josey Wales will be released on Blu-ray this week.

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Phil Brown writes about film for Toronto Standard.