Kramer vs. Kramer was an incredible movie. Based on an adaptation of a novel by Avery Corman, the movie was directed by Robert Benton and released in 1979. The movie became a major landmark in the depiction of the trauma of the divorce of a couple, and the effect that it has on everybody involved, most notably on the young children who are torn apart by the divorce. The depiction of the tensions in a marriage related to ambition, feelings of neglect, and the shift in the earlier traditional roles of a marriage made this movie one that seems relevant even today. The movie came at a time when there was a shift in the traditional dynamics of a marriage, with a greater number of women seeking to find themselves by building a career for themselves. Combine this with a great script, some careful (and non-biased handling), and excellent performances, and you get to see why Kramer vs. Kramer became successful then, and remains a wonderful movie.

The movie starts Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep as Ted and Joanna Kramer. Ted is a rising advertising executive, and needs to put in a large amount of time in his job. Something has got to give when such large amounts of time are spent on the job, and ted is unable to spend much time with his wife and child, eight-year old Billy (Justin Henry). He hardly knows what is going on at home, and greatly neglects his wife Joanna. And then it happens; Joanna feels a total sense of despair, of not doing anything, and informs Ted that she needs to leave in order to try and find herself.
This shocks Ted to an incredible degree. He struggles to understand as to why Joanna left him and also has to adjust to running the house, with a young son, and also keep to his demanding job. He slowly starts to adjust to the reason as to why Joanna left him, and starts to form a bond with his son. His job starts suffering, but he is more interested in being a good parent, and eventually he loses his job. And then, after an year and a half, Joanna comes back to claim Billy. Ted is not willing, and a custody battle happens which Ted loses and custody is granted to Joanna. However, in the end, Joanna tells Ted that she understands that Billy has a great relationship with Ted, and that Billy can continue to stay with Ted.

Oscar Wins

* Best Picture
* Best Director
* Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
* Best Actor in a Leading Role - Dustin Hoffman
* Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Meryl Streep

Nominations

* Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Jane Alexander
* Best Cinematography
* Best Film Editing
* Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Justin Henry. Henry was and is to date the youngest acting Academy Award nominee.

The Green Mile is an incredible movie, at one level set in the depths of human despair (where a person can be convicted for a crime to a large degree because he is of an oppressed race (an African-American) in the depths of the American South in 1935 (as racially discriminating a society as possible), and at another level, about the goodness in a person and the gifts that he imparts. The movie is based on a Stephen King novel (published in 1996), and touches on supernatural and paranormal settings in an American prison based on the arrival of Coffey, a convicted murderer waiting on death row.
The movie is set entirely in flashback, with the recounting of the whole tale done in flashback, with one exception, a stunning revelation in the present by the main speaker (currently in a nursing home). The movie was nominated for 4 Academy awards,
* Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role — Michael Clarke Duncan
* Best Picture — David Valdes, Frank Darabont
* Best Sound Mixing — Robert J. Litt, Elliot Tyson, Michael Herbick, Willie D. Burton
* Best Adapted Screenplay — Frank Darabont

However, the movie did not win any of the awards that it was nominated for. It did win other awards, just not the Oscars. One thinks that was a miss. The Green Mile may feel slow to some, but like the director Frank Darabont’s earlier Stephen King adaptation, The Shahshank Redemption, the movie is very well adapted from the book, and builds up the whole concept of life in the prison, and then introduces the pivotal character, the Black condemned prisoner on Death Row. Most people will not fail to be moved by this film, by the emotions, and by the state of affairs in which a person is condemned to die even when you know that he is innocent because that is the way things used to happen at that time.
The Green Mile refers to the last stretch of green linoleum that condemned prisoners on death row had to walk before they met their fate on ‘Old Sparky’, the electric chair used for executions. Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), an elderly man in a nursing home, comes in contact with a sadistic employee, which eventually causes him to remember an equally horrible employee (in 1935) along with the great giant Coffey, executed despite being innocent.
Paul is the corrections officer incharge of Death Row inmates and it is his responsibility to take a prisoner on the ‘Green Mile’ - the last trip of the prisoners. His life takes a turn when a new prisoner arrives. John Coffey (a great role by Michael Clarke Duncan), a great black giant standing 7 foot tall has been convicted of raping and murdering 2 young white girls and is now in Death Role, awaiting his turn with Old Sparky. Soon, they discover something strange about this slow and gentle giant. He is able to display great healing powers by bringing a mouse (Mr. Jingles) back from the dead, cures the urinary infection of Paul, and for good measure, also saves the tumour struck wife of the warden, Hal Moores (James Cromwell). He cannot explain what he does, but he has some great powers.
Into this mixture arrives a sadistic guard, Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison). He is related to the governor, and is able to be sadistic and obnoxious due to this connection. Nobody can control his sadism and ill-treatment of prisoners due to his connections, but a chance comes when a new prisoner William Wharton (Sam Rockwell) arrives. Coffey comes into contact with him, and realizes that William was the actual killer of the 2 girls for which Coffey is on death row. He then displays his powers, getting Wetmore to shoot William, and then to lapse into a catatonic state from which he never recovers. When Paul asks Coffey about all this, he gets shown a vision by Coffey of what actually happened, something that Paul is not able to endure.
However, in spite of his innocence, Coffey is executed in the prison; but this is not the end. Paul, due to physical contact with Coffey, has gained mightily in terms of a life-span. The mouse Mr. Jingles, whom Coffey brought back, is still alive after 50 years, so Paul can only wonder what will happen to his life span. He is already 108 years as of now (as he explains), has outlived his friends and relatives, and feels that the burden of life (which will go on and on - his own Green Mile) is a punishment for having watched an innocent man executed.

Somehow, I have always liked reading books by Tom Clancy. His books always contain a good deal of learning about things that you read superficially about in news articles, but when you read about them as he explains them, they make much more sense. So, for example, in this book by Tom Clancy that was published in 1995, you learn about trade, about the politics that drive bills in Congress, a lot about the stock market and the working of major financial institutions, and about the military (a pet subject of Tom Clancy), as well as about the effects of a fully laden plane flying into a building.
Now, in a book about a major trade war between the US and Japan, you would expect to see a lot of Japan bashing, but it is not so obvious actually. There are many people in Japan who are depicted as weak or with ill-will towards the US, but then you have major American politicians who are also shown as weak, or philandering. So, there is some Japan bashing, but very minimal, and I am pretty sure that from what I read earlier, the depiction of the influence of businessmen in Japanese political life is accurate to a large degree.
What appeals most about Tom Clancy is how he keeps several stories running at the same time, switching between the stories from time to time and still making sense. One problem of course is doing this, giving character to the novel makes it cumbersome and a bit big to read in terms of pages (this book itself being 900 pages), but I don’t mind it too much. He also plays a lot on honor, considering that too be a core attitude in a person, and he has a set of core characters who are honorable, such as the lead man, Jack Ryan, the CIA operatives, the Russian head of the spy agency, his FBI friend, and so on.
The book starts 2 years from where the previous book (The Sum of All Fears) left off, with Jack Ryan getting called back into public life and getting appointed as the National Security Advisor. He has a couple of initial successes, and then the story takes a twist on its own. A car accident and a botched gas tank leads to politics that leads to a trade war as a politician leverages on the public outrage; this action leads a disaster in terms of the Japanese trade and economy getting badly affected. The Prime Minister has to resign and a hardliner takes over, being guided by a businessman who has visions of Japan regaining old glory. The businessman has also influenced an attempt by the Japanese to develop nuclear weapons, with old Russian missile bodies being used for the delivery mechanism (ostensibly for space launchers).
The trade war escalates, with the Japanese businessman coordinating a melt-down of the storage of American stocks records, leading to a disaster as with no records, there are no established trades. In the midst of this, a planned naval exercise with Japan turns ugly for the Americans when the Japanese sink 2 submarines with all the personnel on board, and America is now at war, with a nation that also has nuclear capability.
In addition, the Americans do not have current nuclear missile capability, they do not have naval assets to take back some islands that the Japanese have taken over. In the midst of all, there is a sexual criminal scandal against the Vice-President. Jack Ryan has to deploy all his skills to win back the initiative for the Americans, and he eventually does that. The description of the military battles as well as the stock mechanisms are very detailed. The only weak point was the sudden termination of the scandal involving the Vice-President.
At the end of the book, with the Vice-President having resigned, Jack Ryan is called to be the Vice-President, at which a time a disgruntled Japanese pilot puts his fully fuel loaded plane into the Capitol Hill, killing most of Congress, the President and the Supreme Court. Jack Ryan will have to be President now.

I guess more people would have seen the Godfather movies rather than read the book; but let me start by saying that this is a great book. The book is a fairly gripping book, establishing both the history of why the godfather became the godfather (Vito Corleone), and also the birth of the next Godfather, Michael Corleone. It does meander a bit in between when trying to explain various things, but overall is a very taut book.
The book takes the Corleone family, one of the 5 mafia crime families and the tensions between them. The book explains the motives and the development of characters for some of the main characters of the book, Vito Corleone, Sonny Corleone, Michael Corleone, Connie, Kay (Michael’s wife), Tom Hagen, and a few others, but whose characters are not so well developed.
The book also explains numerous mafia activities to people who may not be well-enough acquainted with some of these terms, terms such as button man, hitting the matresses, omerta, La cosa nostra, etc.
The story explains how a poor Italian immigrant, a man of quiet nature, but internally a very powerful individual, slowly starts to be seen as a man of power, a man of stature and one who can influence things. He can get his people justice, deferment from the army, rough justice against anyone who has harmed them and so on. While reading this book, it would not seem strange at all that all these activities are illegal :-), they just seem natural. Slowly, he starts to build an empire consisting of political connections, book-keeping, races, and many other vices including the illegal running of alcohol. However, even such people have their own scruples, such as being against prostitution and drugs.
And this is what brings him down and decides the rest of the book. Vito refuses help to another family seeking to expand in the drugs field, and provokes an assassination attempt in which he is injured, and which brings his violent son Sonny into the field as the interim leader (his other son Michael is outside the family business, being a decorated soldier). Hence, in a quirk of fate, Michael gets involved, kills 2 people and escapes the country. In the ensuing gang warfare, Sonny is killed and Vito Corleone, The Godfather, gets up from his sick bed in an attempt to ensure the safe return of his son Michael back.
Vito makes a deal in which he accepts Sonny’s death and foreswears all vengeance (although he is perceived as weak due to this lack of revenge) in order to get Michael back. The aim of course is long-term, to get Michael to take the revenge after setting him up as the Godfather. The latter part of the book is about this effort; how Michael gains the power of the family, how he turns from being a loyal American to the head of a major criminal family, and how he eventually carries out the revenge (by killing a number of the opposition families leaders, and also killing his own brother-in-law for the role he had in getting Sonny killed).
It is only at the end where the author puts a touch about that these people are bad people, when you see that the women of the family are praying for their souls. The book also depicts women and the African-American community in a bad light, thus depicting the inherent racism of the Italian (and maybe others) community as of that time.

This was the first Jeffrey Archer that I read, and this was the first one written by him way back in 1974. It was a slow starter, but slowly picked up by word of mouth, and eventually became a big hit. The book was a bit raw, since it was his first book, but was still extremely enjoyable. The book was not terribly thick either, and was thus a good read.
So what was the book all about? It was essentially about the revenge thought up by a cold, calculating mind, that of a Harvard graduate now teaching at Oxford against a swindler. The story starts with the swindle though up by a man who has made his money by high-level cheating; in this case, Harvey Metcalfe, sells a story about an oil stock just about to hit it big. He manages to swindle 4 people out of a considerable portion of their money; Stephen Bradley, a Harvard mathematics graduate now teaching at Oxford; Robin, a physician at Harley Street; Jean-Pierre Lamans, an art dealer; and James Brigsley, a presumably vacant young English lord.
So when Stephen Bradley finds that he is now holding dud oil stock, he wants to get his money back, not exactly revenge, he just wants to get his money back, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less. He contacts the other 3 people swindled, and while initially they are unwilling to admit that they lost money, they eventually do so. He forms his own small army to get their money back. Part of the plan is that all the robbed will make their own plans to get the money back, and all of them will play their parts in each plan. The rest of the book is about how each of them make their own plans based on their own areas of knowledge, and start making a fool of Metcalfe. The amusing part is also about how they treat James Brigley as the only person who is presumably not smart enough to make his own plans; but eventually in a twist, due to romancing Metcalfe’s daughter, he manages to get money back.
The last twist in the story is contained in the final 2 pages, so it is possible like I did so, where the last 2 pages were stuck together, and it is only when I read a different copy that I realized the final twist.

This is an incredibly interesting novel. The common motif running through Sydney Sheldon’s novels is that of a strong woman character who faces challenges, and eventually triumphes.
If tomorrow comes is about a woman called Tracy Whitney, who is seemingly well set. She is in love with a rich handsome guy, and he, over parental disapproval is all set to marry her. In a tragedy, she finds that her mother has committed suicide after being cheated by a local hood. She attacks him, and he uses that incident to get her jailed, as well as convicted of a painting theft (so that he can benefit). She gets betrayed by her lawyer and the judge.
She is now in jail, subject to the pressures over there, and having been dumped by her fiancee who can’t have relations with anybody who has been convicted for theft and is an attempted murderer. In jail, she comes across inmates who are used to dominating others, and is setup as a target by one of these. Another one such defends her, but she really needs to escape from jail. She gets a plot, but as she is moving away, she makes the choice of saving the jailor’s son who is drowning.
She is now a heroine, and eventual public pressure gets her a pardon. So she is now out, but without a job. After not luck regarding a career (due to being an ex-felon), she joins a cheating crowd, and starts becoming an expert at cheating people. First she takes revenge on the people who betrayed her (and this is interesting reading, especially the part about the judge getting convicted of spying in Russia). The rest of the book is all about her various adventures in cheating people, as well as the attemtps of an investigator who is always on her trail.
This is a pretty gripping novel, and not something that you can easily put down. Fun to read, and the incidents don’t seem very unrealistic. You can actually emphatize with the heroine, who is actually cheating people.

So here I was browsing through a bookstore when I saw that they had a section for books on discount. Now I am always a sucker for good books at reduced prices, so off I went. There was this book lying there with a black cover that seemed to be about the US Supreme Court. Now I have always been interested in legal histories and constitutional law, and so I picked the book up. I have never regretted the move.
The book is called “Of Power and Right: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and America’s Constitutional Revolution“ by Howard Ball and Philip J Cooper (1992).
I am not a citizen of the US, nor am I affected by the laws governing the US, so why am I writing a review of the book?
The book presents an epic view of the US legal and social society through the goings-on in the US Supreme Court from the time of the New Deal to the removal of the race-segregation laws, and to the emergence of cases dealing with the rights of the state (government) vs. the rights of the individual. There are essentially 2 streams of thoughts about the power of the judicial system: Judges need to respect that the legislature is the expression of the will of the people and not try their own interpretation, vs. the interpretation that the role of a judge is to hold the constitution supreme and effectively use this as the benchmark for determining the validity of a law.
Justice Hugo Black was a believer in the first thesis (power), while justice William Douglas believed in the second one (right). The book details their initial career before their movement into the Supreme Court, and then really comes into its own. The interactions between the Justices, between the executive and the Justices, and the process (including persuasion and disagreements) used by the Supreme Court to come out with a judgement is all brought out in great detail, and helps to provide a high level of understanding. The cases dealing with the internment of the American citizens of Japanese descent during the second world war, the military tribunals dealing with German spies caught on American land, and specifically the most famous case of the racial segregation era (Brown vs. Board of Education) are all brought out in great detail in this book.
For a layman, the legal and judicial system is wrapped up in mystery when it comes to its intricacies. This book will go a long way in helping people understand how the judicial system works, and how the opinions of Justices drive the US Supreme Court.

This movie was made in 1997, and was a very slick movie. The movie was based on a 1990 book of the same name by James Ellroy, and was at one time considered very difficult to base a book on. But, finally the book was converted into a screenplay by Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland, and turned into this movie that won 2 Oscars (Best Supporting Acress for Kim Basinger and Best Adapted Screenplay (a vindication of the efforts by Curtis and Brian)). The movie is considered a good effect of a new-generation noir movie, with a great direction by Curtis.
The movie was acclaimed by most critics, although it earned only around $30 million profit in the US (costing 35 mil and making 65 mil), but it must have also been earning a lot more from the DVD market and from the international market. The movie primarily stars 5 characters (Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pierce as 3 cops in the LAPD; Kim Basigner in an award winning role; and James Cromwell in the pivotal role of Capt Dudley Smith as the Police Captain who wants to build the crime system lorded over by himself.

The movie is set in the 1950’s Los Angeles, and for the people who did not know what the city was like at that time, it presented not a very clean picture. There was a lot of cop violence, corruption in the police force, sleaze in Hollywood, a lot of buzz about call girls who were styled to look like top movie actresses, drug addiction, tabloid journalism out to expose corruption and crime so as to sell more (although that does not seem to have changed). The movie focuses on the intersection of all these, and tries to end at a positive end with some of the forces of corruption reduced and the police administration wanting to make a clean sweep of the police force so that it can be a respected force.
The roles of these 3 cops is the most pivotal, since it is they who drive the various scenes and acts of the movie. The youngest and freshest to the Police Force is Detective Lieutenant Edmund Exley (Guy Pearce), the son of a legend from whom much is expected. He is a change from the brutality and corruption in the police force and is basically honest, although he is shown to be manipulative in the end. However, these attributes set him aside from the other policemen, especially when he testifies in a jailhouse brutality trial in which a long-serving member of the police force is implicated and has to retire.
The next is Officer Wendell “Bud” White (Russell Crowe), who is a man who uses force a lot, and is much feared. He has no love lost for Exley, especially when his partner is removed from the police force based on Exley’s testimony. However, when his former police partner is killed in the ‘Nite Owl’ massacre, he becomes much more involved in the case. He does not take kindly to women beaters, and is tender to the victims. He is also being used by the Captain to take down rival mafia leaders.
The third cop is Sergeant Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), a very slick cop, who is in the limelight. He serves as the technical advisor to a crime television show, and also funnels a lot of information to Danny DeVito (who is connected with Hush-Hush magazine), including making arrests almost in front of the camera of the magazine.
The main event of the movie is the massacre of the patrons of an all-night diner, called the Nite Owl massacre. The investigation of this leads to a call-girl racket in which Kim Basinger is involved, and Russell Crowe starts having an affair with her. The others also get involved during investigation, and eventually the trail leads to a small cabin in the middle of nowhere where the actual person behind everything is revealed, and then Guy Pearce kills him, and then manipulates the police command by playing on their need to have a hero emerge from all this, this hero being Guy Pearce.
The movie had some casting difficulties, after all, there are 2 Australian stars in key points of the movie, but after seeing the movie, one can appreciate all the performances. If you want to admire the film art, and also appreciate a fast movie, then buy this movie.

If you have read some of my earlier reviews, you would not be faulted for assuming that I am a fan of Tom Clancy’s writings. I have read most of his books, and found fault with few of them; in each of them I have gained a bit of knowledge about matters about which I did not know previously, whether it be the working of the US Government and its intelligence agencies (although this knowledge would be outdated with the sweeping changes introduced after the September 11 attacks in the entire intelligence hierarchy and the demotion of the CIA), the interaction between the various arms of the US Government (executive, legislature and judiciary), knowledge of financial institutions and the stock market, and the precise attention to detail that is paid to military matters. Some are controversial, including the one that starts this book.
The power of Tom Clancy as an author is in terms of how his various plots drag you into the novel (feel free to disagree if it does not have the same effect on you), and typically there are a number of sub-plots that seem to merge as you move on, and culminate towards a gripping conclusion. Of course, the conclusion is unlike a detective novel (where you might find out whodunit on the last page), you would know where all this is going to land up when reading the last 50 pages (except for the prequel to this novel, the ‘Debt of Honor’).

Surprisingly for Clancy, this novel has a couple of weaknesses in the sense that one of the sub-plots involving the anarchists never made much of an impact, and the ending of that plot was also a bit weak, and he could have removed it without any impact on the book (unless he made it stronger). Additionally, the concept of a sleeper agent exists, but for one to rise undetected through the ranks and reach so close to the President was a bit hard to believe, you would believe after all that such a person would sooner or later get swayed by the influence of the culture he lives in. Also, some of his characters are painted in a fairly negative way, for example the Iranian leader, even while explaining his motives, does not have anything positive for you to understand him as a complex character.
From this point on, there will be some detailing of the story, so if you want to avoid spoilers, you can jump away at any point and go ahead and read the novel.
Executive Orders was released in 1996 and starts where Debt of Honor concludes as a renegade Japanese pilot takes his jumbo jet and pilots it into the Capitol (The US Congress). (Imagine the shock when the September 11 attacks took place involving large jets colliding with buildings, including the fourth jet, brought down by passengers that was supposed to be attacking the US Congress). When you read the book including the details, you can begin to understand as why the World Trade Towers actually went down, and feel for the people who were affected.
Jack Ryan was supposed to be brought into the building for confirmation as the Vice-President, and since the President is now dead, he is defaulted as the new President, at a time when most of the Washington based central administration is dead (Cabinet Secretaries, Senators, Congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, all). As the book says, the US Government was gutted.
Tom Clancy has the concept of honor woven into his books, and Jack Ryan is a honorable man (different from most politicians) and will do what it takes to build the administration of the country up again, assisted by some able advisors such as the experienced Chief of Staff, a straight FBI agent made as the Acting Director, and his friends in the CIA as the CIA head (and he is accused of building up the Government in his image, maybe rightfully so, since putting your friends in prominent positions is a form of nepotism). He also has an unusual challenge where the resigned Vice-President, Ed Kealty claims a honor also by claiming that he did not officially resign and hence he should be the President by simple law. Unfortunately, Jack Ryan controls the Government and hence has a major lead.
Given that the heads of most Governments have not read the previous books and do not know the inner strength of Jack Ryan, they under-estimate his capabilities. For example, when he does not display a seemingly political speech at the memorial of the victims, he is seen as not presidential and his overseas enemies feel that the time is right to defeat the United States.
The major incidents of the book get started when a person seemingly Saddam Hussein (although not by name), is assassinated by a deep undercover ready-to-die Iranian agent under the control of the Iranian cleric (Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei), Iraq is ripe for the picking (especially since Saddam never let a second line of command build up). Soon, in a carefully choreographed yet quick turn of events, all resistance inside Iraq melts and it joins Iraq (a bit difficult to believe since the rulers were all Sunni, very resistant to Shia Iran and would not have so easily joined up, but anyhow, let us continue). Now, if only they can get Saudi Arabia, then the United Islamic Republic would be in control of the holy places and the largest oil exporter in the world.
What stops them from doing do? Primarily the US, since it would not like the Saudi regime to be replaced by an clerical Iranian controller. So how to stop the the US from doing so; get some countries such as India and China to act as distractors, and then incapacitate the US by crippling with with a biological attack (an Ebola based warfare, lethal and described in great detail) as well as an assassination attack on the President directly.
The novel has some great parts on how Ryan acts as per his instincts, which are decidedly not leaning towards the Democratic Party (his spiel for strict constructionists for the Supreme Court sounds very much like Samuel Aito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia - people whom I consider can set the rights of individuals back by a large degree), and his debate on whether to limit cross-state travel (though sounding correct) can be very ominous indeed, given that the current debates are all about using the need for fighting terrorism to set more control.
In the end, his struggle to beat Ebola is successful, and he is also able to set forth a principle about making leaders responsible by getting the Iranian leader killed; at the same time that a small section of his army, using its high-tech wizardry is able to beat the UIR army in a very believable way.
Why is the novel called Executive Orders ? Because the President governs within the ambit of laws made by Congress, and in the absence of Congress, he can govern with the issue of Executive Orders.

Westerns in the American movie world have typically of the sphagetti western type popularized by Clint Eastwood, and for those who remember, by John Wayne earlier. After all, how many would not remember ‘For a fistfull of dollars’, ‘High Noon’, ‘Once upon a time in the West’, and so on. The westerns in movies portray a picture that is vastly different from the one portrayed in Unforgiven in many respects.
Traditional westerns have mostly portrayed the west as a desolate place, with the gunslinger as a loner, treading along on his trusty steed; sometimes fighting the villain, sometimes fighting Indians, or it can be the cowboy working on a ranch or trying to setup something on his own in a big ranch. The hero is typically a good man from the heart, shooting from the hip, and wearing a certain set of clothes including a Stetson hat (large), spurs, bandanna (many of them), buckskins, a rifle or maybe a revolver. Many times the setting happen in a location that can be mountainous and arid at the same time, or in a desert like situation with sage rolling on the ground. A saloon forms a distinct part of the landscape, and a sheriff is an important part of the locality, with people being deputized when required. Here also you will hear the term ‘posse’.

This entire vision had been under revision for some time with facts, studies and movies trying to debunk the romance involved in this mission. And then came this movie, Unforgiven (1992) which cleared away the whole vision, instead portraying people as normal people. So a gunfighter is essentially a mercenary (who will kill women and children for money), a sheriff is a person who does not implement fairness and is not above implementing his beliefs for implementing law, where women do not have an equal role; essentially it is a sordid tale. You have an aspiring gunslinger who finds out that life is more sordid than he expected, and you have a journalist who will do anything for a story.
Unforgiven was such a stark movie and so impressed people that it won a variety of Academy Awards. It was nominated for 9 awards and won 4 of them:
1. Best Picture for Clint Eastwood
2. Best Director for Clint Eastwood
3. Best Editing for Joel Cox
4. Best Actor in a supporting role for Gene Hackman
Violence is not glorified in any way, and even the anti-hero (Clint Eastwood) is not portrayed as a heroic figure, instead he is a retired former gunslinger (who was reformed after marriage), and is now supporting 2 children (his wife has died) by running a pig farm and gets back to being an active gunslinger because he needs the money.
The movie starts with a prostitute being attacked by a cowboy when she makes fun of his under-developed organ, and he, in a rage, slashes her face with a knife. The sheriff, Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), a former gunfighter himself, comes and dispenses justice; he fines the cowboy and his friend and then, pays the money to the saloon owner and the pimp since they suffered damage to their goods; the prostitute does not get anything and the cowboy is not punished in any way.
The women of the saloon are outraged at this display of injustice and collect $1000 for whoever bounty hunter will kill the 2 cowboys and spread this information far and wide. People respond to this, with a newbie gunfighter, The Kid recruiting William Munny (Eastwood) to try and collect this money. Munny is a retired gunslinger, mercenary, and bandit, so he does not have a very reputable past life. Munny also takes the help of Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) to help in this mission, and they set off to kill the 2 cowboys.
Another person is also approaching for the sake of getting this money, English Bob (Richard Harris). He arrives with his own biographer to write a book about him called ‘The Duke of Death’. However, the sheriff has not taken kindly to the thought of bounty hunters arriving in his town to kill the cowboys and beats up English Bob and jails him, whereupon the biographer switched sides. He is a fan of the Great Western, and the sheriff seems to be a good representative of the lot. Further, there is a local ordinance that prohibits guns, and hence the sheriff is empowered to arrest anybody who carries guns.
And then these 3 - the Kid, Munny and Logan arrive in town and enter the saloon where while Munny waits downstairs, the other 2 go up to enjoy the prostitutes. And then the sheriff, Little Bill discovers that Munny is carrying a gun; given the reason, he beats Munny pretty viciously in front of everybody in the saloon. However, he escapes with his life and The Kid and Logan take him out of town and nurse him to a recovery with the help of the prostitutes.
Once Munny is recovered, they start tracking the cowboys down, and kill one of them. The murder shakes Logan up and he wants to leave; so the Kid and Munny continue and kill the other cowboy where he had hidden. One of the points of the movie is that murder is not something that you can do and then be casual; it affects both Logan and the Kid, since both renounce killing after that. The Kid no longer wants to become a gunslinger.
Logan in the meantime has been caught by the sheriff who is beating him to get information, and in the process he kills Logan; his dead body in a sheriff is then put for display just outside the saloon as a reminder that wild west justice can be harsh. When Munny gets his reward money, he is also told about the death of Logan and that puts him in a fury. He had given up drinking, but now drinks whiskey again and prepared to confront the sheriff.
In the meantime, the sheriff has setup a posse in the saloon to pursue Munny and the Kid, but then Munny arrives. He holds up everybody with a shotgun and then shoots the saloon owner who is unarmed; when told that this was not a done thing (after all, the correct thing was to shoot somebody when they also had a weapon), he retaliates that this was bound to happen ever since Logan was killed and his body displayed outside the saloon. In the ensuing gun fight, he is more skilled, and kills 3 posse members, and wounds the sheriff. And then when he hears the sheriff re-loading, he disarms him and then kills him.
But the point is, there is no heroism in this scene; Munny kills people after disarming them, or when they don’t have a gun as well. In addition, even when leaving, he threatens all sorts of threats against anybody who would come after him, including threatening to kill their families.
If you are a western fan, then you should watch this movie; it is a decidedly different sort of movie. Further, this movie is a classic, part of any good DVD collection.