- As The Outlaw Josey Wales, four-time Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood is ideally cast as a hard-hitting, fast-drawing loner, recalling his ?Man with No Name? from his European Westerns. But unlike that other mythic outlaw, Josey Wales has a name ? and a heart.After avenging his family?s brutal murder, Wales is on the lam, pursued by a pack of killers. He travels alone, but a ragtag group of out
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/02/2008 Run time: 135 minutes Rating: PgDuring the Civil War, Union “Redlegs” attack Southerner Josey Wales’s dirt farm and wipe out his family. Seeking vengeance, Wales throws in with a company of Reb guerrillas. Tagged as a renegade after the surrender, he flees west into the vastness of the Indian Territories, where, quite unintentionally, he finds himself cast as the straight-shooting paterfamilias of an ever-growing, spectacularly motley community of misfits and castaways. Which is to say, Josey’s personal quest for survival and something like peace of mind evolves into a funky, multicultural allegory of the healing of America.
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Clint Eastwood’s 31st film as an actor, 20th as international star, and 5th as director, was the first to win him widespread respect. Critics had grumbled when the producer-star replaced Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) in the director’s chair a week into shooting. They ended up cheering when Eastwood delivered both his most sympathetic performance to date and–with the heroic collaboration of cinematographer Bruce Surtees–an impressive Panavision epic that stresses the scruffiness, rather than the scenic splendors, of frontier life.
Though it’s been honored with a place in the National Film Registry, Josey Wales is good, not great, Eastwood. The big-gun fetishism can get tiresome, and too many characters exist only to serve as six-gun (and at one point Gatling gun) fodder. But mostly the film is agreeably eccentric, and almost furtively sweet in spirit–a key transitional title in the Eastwood filmography, and one of his most entertaining. –Richard T. JamesonClint Eastwood fired the original director, Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff), and took over the reins of this project himself. He may have had a point: this brutal, thoughtful western, a near-tragedy about a Civil War veteran whose past comes looking for him, is probably Eastwood’s most mature frontier drama prior to the Oscar winning Unforgiven. Hoping to build a quiet life in a cooperative community of settlers, Eastwood’s Wales blames himself when his enemies attack the homestead, and he has to revert to his warrior instincts to help fend off the threat. The jittery intensity of Sondra Locke (who would be Mrs. Eastwood, at least for a while), and the screen-filling charisma of the late Chief Dan George harmonize beautifully with Eastwood, who had finally figured out how to add depth and texture to his stock-in-trade Man of Steel persona. This one may be too short on action to satisfy fans of Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films, or of the Italian westerns he made with Sergio Leone, but it’s an honorable effort. –David Chute
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February 2, 2006
#1
This might have been a passable western BUT with such violence and a pretty graghic molestation scene, it is certainly not PG family material! Very disappointed!
February 2, 2006
#2
This is another Clint movie that is too slow, too long, and isn’t nearly as deep as many people have come to believe. Clint’s strength isn’t direction, contrary to certain opinions. This story could have been told in less than 2 hours, but it dragged on way too long. Chief Dan George is the sole redeeming factor for TOJW. HIS performance makes this movie worth watching now and again, but as a whole, this movie is only worth 1 viewing. By the way, Philip Kaufman(sp?) started out directing this movie, until Clint decided he wasn’t cutting it, and literally took control. From that moment forward, Hollywood adopted ‘The Eastwood Director Rule’, specifically: “That no member of the set or crew may replace a director once that director has already been put in place”. Kaufman never regained his footing in Hollywood again.
February 2, 2006
#3
I won’t exaggerate like the others here. What should be said is, that’s an entertaining movie, in which you’ll find a lot of gunfights, gunshots, dead bodies, and again, gunfights – a real blood bath.
Look, if you’re a male all the violence would be acceptable, and believe me the film is full of that. As for girls, my sister liked it ,but then again ,we’d gotten her to love all the Rockies ,Rambos ,terminators etc.
As a whole it’s not a waste of time, though it’s very long in comparison to other westerns. You would forget the world for a few hours, and simply drift into a fictional story ,that has a few funny ,enjoying moments in it (pay attention to the miserable dog!). Of course ,Clint is Clint ,with all of his gestures ,charisma and clichés,and , after all, you’re on to see the man and the legend so why shouldn’t you?
February 2, 2006
#4
This movie is ok but not fantastic compared to the Sergio Leone classics. Even Pale Rider, also directed by Eastwood, was a much better movie with a more fulfilling and beleivable character and story. The characters in this film are kind of wooden and things come off as less than realistic. For example, the blood on Josey’s face just after his family is killed in the beginning looks dabbed on (with Halloween vampire blood). His transition from wronged gentle farmer to mythic gunfighter Josie Wales happens within the first ten minutes – so quick, it’s like – what? Nothing even leads us through a transition except that we see he’s suddenly joined a band of men, “outlaws” who are really the good guys, and within a matter of minutes he’s a heroic gun-fighter. At least with his other mythic-like “Man with no name” gunfighters, we accept that as a basis of the movie style. Here the movie makes some claim toward telling the story of a historic figure. There’s more: I don’t find it realistic that he was speaking perfect English with the Commanche chief when he goes to settle things with the chief (who incidentally played “Chief” in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest). It’s doubtful that Native Americans still practicing their traditional way of life in a secluded part of the American frontier (i.e., not living on a reservation or in much contact with white men) would speak and understand the kind of fluent and colloquial English that Wales (Eastwood) speaks, however noble the sentiment. Another thing that bugged from near the beginning of the movie when they charge the corrupt ‘cavalry’ – his friend who gets shot and later ends up riding with him looks like he’s still ready for a day at the beach rather than seriously injured. Hard to take seriously. And frankly speaking, I got a little tired of old Josie’s constant spitting – although it was occasionally humorous, like when he kept nailing his poor dog. Mostly I get a hick 70s vibe rather than anything happening at the end of the civil war era. I generally like 70s movies, and Clint Eastwood movies, but this one was just ok. Some parts lasted too long and I’d fast forward slow enough to read the dialogue but push the movie past yet another dragged out scene with wooden dialogue.
After the director’s comment in the beginning of the movie where Clint himself says it’s one of his favorites, I was expecting a little more. Maybe because he was directing it or because of the content – it touches on some of the maurading elements that existed amidst the chaos at the end of the civil war, though except for the initial burning of his family’s home, there weren’t any other scenes or dialogue to really impress or educate on this issue. We just know Clint’s been wronged and is gonna kick some @ss from his would-be pursuers – kind of like Kung Fu, except that in Kung Fu we understand how Cain becomes the gentle yet deadly vagabond that he is – in Josie Wales, his transition from gentle farmer to hands-of-death outlaw happens in the first 10 minutes of the movie and there is no transition except to say – hey, suddenly he is! With all the other inconsistencies it wasn’t easy to take seriously as a substantial story about a historical figure; it didn’t move me on many other levels either. It’s Dirty Harry meets the old west, but give me a real Dirty Harry movie over this any day. I like movies with larger than life heroes bordering on magical realism. This movie’s fault is that it tries to do both, but doesn’t succeed at either. At least for me. It wasn’t terrible, just not great. A 5-star Western with Clint is like “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” Compare that movie to this and you see what all these 5-star reviews mean. I’d even put Pale Rider in the 5 star zone. In the pantheon of great Westerns, Josie Wales was average, maybe a touch above. 3.5 stars.
February 2, 2006
#5
The movie I liked very much,one of the best he ever made.
This is the first product that I’ve received through Amazon which was subpar. Not the movie ;but the DVD was so very dark that no matter what was done it was extremely dark.