Unforgiven.

With the Westerner, it is a crucial point of honor not to "do it first"; his gun remains in its holster until the moment of combat....The Westerner could not fulfill himself if the moment did not finally come when he can shoot his enemy down. But because that moment is so thoroughly the expression of his being, it must be kept pure. He will not violate the accepted forms of combat though by doing so he could save a city....The Westerner is the last gentleman ....

What we see first in Unforgiven is a man burying his wife. It's a still, almost painterly shot with the digger a silhouette against a gorgeous golden horizon. Then words scroll up the screen telling us that this man's mother-in-law could never comprehend how any daughter of hers would marry someone like Will Munny, "a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition." We smile at this, for surely Munny will be played by Clint Eastwood and how could any overcivilized mother-in-law be expected to understand Clint as anything but a beast? We know better. Eastwood (even in his urban cop movies) has been for our time what John Wayne and Gary Cooper were for theirs: the Westerner, the justified killer so well described by Warshow. His the scrupulosity in killing; ours the exhilaration in watching the just kill. The mechanics of the Western endorse the hero's violence and thereby absolve us from guilt at enjoying it. We know that the words of Unforgiven's prologue are meant ironically and that the mother-in-law will be refuted.

And, sure enough, Munny-Eastwood is soon characterized as a reformed gunslinger turned pig farmer who is devoted to the memory of the wife who reformed him; who is a teetotaler because his wife had him swear off the stuff; who is an indulgent father who only mildly censures his little boy for cursing; who is a loyal friend to his black comrade, Nate; who refuses to boast of his violent past to a wide-eyed youngster; who resumes gunslinging only to make enough money to save his failing farm and feed his children. We can rest assured that when this man finally reverts to violence it will be only to kill eminently killable varmints in utterly fair fights undertaken in an entirely just cause.

What is that just cause? It is to collect a bounty placed on the heads of two cowboys who have reputedly mutilated a prostitute in a flimsy little simulacrum of a town called Big Whiskey. Its sheriff, Little Bill Daggett, a megalomaniac who is drunk on his power to dispense justice, has only fined the offenders, so the brothel's enraged madam has offered blood money. Eastwood, accompanied by an old pal, Nate, and a young wannabe shootist, the Schofield Kid, takes on the assignment.

But wait. We have seen the knifing of that poor whore and Munny hasn't. One cowboy did indeed scar the girl, but his friend Davy, hardly more than a boy, at first held the girl down, then immediately repented and tried twice to save her from the brute, only to be hurled aside. And, fined in horseflesh (thoroughbred horses surrendered to the brothel's whoremaster), the youth brings an extra mount to the girl herself, hoping that she will forgive his role in the maiming. Surely the honorable Munny won't deliver this repentant, blue-eyed boy to Mr. Death....

But he does. In a superb scene, Munny, perched on a crag, aims very carefully down at Davy, who, disabled with a broken leg, tries to drag himself to the safety of some rocks. Director Eastwood cuts back and forth between an extremely close view of the agonized, crawling body and a medium close-up of Munny coolly, almost meditatively taking aim, missing, aiming again. Finally, a bullet finds the mark and Davy lies dying, pleading for water. His cowboy friends, pinned down by gunfire, are too frightened to succor him. Eastwood stops shooting and cries out, For God's sake, give him some water. I won't shoot!" And, a moment later, when the cry rings up from the canyon, "You murdering bastards, you killed our Davy boy!" Munny looks not so much remorseful as exhausted, limp, disgusted. What sort of a hero is this?

And what kind of a villain is Sheriff Daggett, whose legal arbitrariness initiates the violence and who is certainly brutal enough to earn our hatred. In Gene Hackman's superb performance, brutality of action is swathed in an avuncularity of manner which somehow makes the action all the more repellent. While quieting down the protesting madam, Daggett softly inquires, "Haven't you seen enough bloodshed, Alice?" but his hand has her wrist in a vise. When he pauses in flogging Nate to interrogate the tortured man, it is with the concerned air of a high school principal calling a truant student on the carpet.

Yet Little Bill is also a brave man who faces armed opponents without flinching; who is genuinely concerned that his wretched little town grow into some semblance of prosperity or even civilization; who is cheerfully and ineptly trying to build a porch onto his house so that he may sit peacefully and enjoy the view; who comically catches a glimpse of immortality when a dime novelist quizzes him on his experiences and opinions. "I do not like assassins or men of low character," Daggett dictates to his cut-rate Boswell and we can almost see his ego swell up like a frog's gullet as he achieves what he considers to be a lapidary phrase. At such times, it's hard to dislike Little Bill. Then he kicks a man's head half in or beats a woman for information and we detest him.

Such balancing and counterpointing of traits is characteristic of David Webb Peoples's complex, dextrous script: the madam is both a caring woman who defends the dignity of her girls, and a screaming harridan who flings clods of mud at the repentant cowboy. Nate is a lovable comrade, a wise counselor, a skillful surgeon - and a man who jumps at the chance to be an assassin because he misses the adventuring of his youth but doesn't realize, until too late, that he no longer has the stomach for killing. Nobody's easy to figure out in this movie.

Clint Eastwood is no longer a surprisingly good director. He has become a master. Every shot expresses the momentary intention of the writer; the visual rhythms are always in sync with the needs of the story. And, since the script is a subtle one, so is the direction subtle. The pimp assures Little Bill that news of the bounty won't reach as far as Texas; then a train's whistle sounds, smoke appears on the horizon, and both men suddenly know that the news will carry. The deputies loading their guns in the jailhouse make such a clangor that we think of swords and armor as well as bullets and shotguns. The horrible account of a murder is rendered all the more horrible for being told by a sweet-faced girl.

And what do superb script and direction add up to? I hesitate to call Unforgiven die first Calvinist Western because I don't know enough about Calvinism, but somehow the tag sounds right. Supine, shot in the stomach, the wicked villain Daggett looks up into the face of the equally wicked hero Munny and mutters, "I don't deserve to die like this."

"Deserve has nothing to do with it," sneers Munny.

"I'll see you in hell, Munny."

"Yeah," agrees the good family man, and proceeds to blow his helpless enemy away.

The mother-in-law was right. Clint Eastwood has turned "the last gentleman" into a monster.