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The Outlaw Josey Wales [VHS]

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Although Clint Eastwood gained his greatest critical acclaim as a director for 1992's "Unforgiven" and 2003's "Mystic River" -- both of which are incredible pieces of American cinema -- his best film remains this perennially popular Western from 1976. Here's Eastwood's own take on it: "I do believe that if I'd made that picture in 1992, in place of `Unforgiven,' it might have received the same amount of attention, because I think it's equally as good a film. I think the subject matter of `Josey Wales' is timeless." Orson Welles himself named it one of his favorite movies!

Yet critics at the time completely dismissed it as just another Clint Eastwood Western-Revenge flick. On the surface, the plot might give you that illusion: Missouri farmer Josey Wales loses his family to marauding Union cutthroats during the civil war. In retaliation, he joins Qunatrill's raiders in the guerrilla warfare that flames across Missouri. When the war ends, Wales refuses to surrender. He flies west across the country, chased by his former leader Fletcher (John Vernon in a great, sympathetic performance) and Terrill, the Union captain who murdered his family (Eastwood regular Bill McKinney). It seems Wales has no future except to stay alive long enough to get his revenge.

But...that's not at all what movie ends up being about. Gradually, Wales finds himself at the center of a growing community of outcasts from many different backgrounds: an old Cherokee named Lone Watie (Chief Dan George, in the film's most unforgettable performance), a band of Northern settlers (including Sondra Locke in her first role with Clint), a girl from another Native American tribe, the residents of a dying Texas town, and a red bone hound. Gradually, "The Outlaw Josey Wales" turns into a story about forgetting revenge and a fixation on death, and instead about embracing life and rebuilding a community. "Dying is easy for men like you and me," Wales says to a Comanche chief (Will Sampson) in one scene. "It's living that's hard." It's one of the most unexpectedly uplifting and moving films ever made. And, let's make no mistake about it, it's also an action-packed, tough, and exciting film.

Strangely, the film came out of extremely difficult circumstances and rough beginnings. Eastwood purchased the rights to Forrest Carter's novel "Gone to Texas," only to discover that the author was actually Asa (Ace) Carter, who had worked as a speech writer for George Wallace supporting racial segregation and had once created a subgroup of the Ku Klux Klan. Upon meeting Carter, Eastwood and his producer Robert Daley found the man to be a borderline sociopath (he drew a knife on one of Daley's secretaries at a restaurant). Regardless, Eastwood loved the beautiful story too much and pushed on with making the film. He hired Philip Kaufman to both write and direct the movie, now re-named "The Outlaw Josey Wales." Kaufman (along with Sonia Chernus) wrote a stunning script, but after only a few days on the set, it became obvious he wasn't working out as a director; his style clashed with Eastwood's. Eastwood quietly removed him as director and took over the job himself. As Eastwood's biographer notes, "Kaufman was to a degree the victim of Clint's growing confidence in his own abilities."

Despite this confused beginning, "The Outlaw Josey Wales" turned into a magical piece of Western cinema and a huge hit with audiences. It gets better and better with each viewing: a thrilling adventure when you first see it, its many layers of beautiful subtlety emerge each time you go back to it. Bruce Surtees's photography is astonishing, Jerry Fielding's music exciting and unusual for a Western, and every performance top-notch. Few films are as all-around well done as this American classic.

The DVD offers the film in a glorious widescreen transfer with a new 5.1 sound mix, but there are no extras. Considering the history behind the making of the film, this disc really ought to sport some fascinating commentaries and documentaries, but alas, nothing. Still, I can recommend few films higher than "The Outlaw Josey Wales."

This review refers to the Warner Bros DVD Widescreen Edition of ""The Outlaw Josey Wales".......

Josey Wales is another of Clint's Eastwood's bigger than life Western characters that you won't soon forget.Josey though, is not like the others that preceeded him. It becomes apparent throughout this film, that this tough loner, on the run from murderers, has a heart the size of Texas.(And of course in this one we DO know his name!).
Eastwood also does an artful job of directing this tale, that has everthing from action to romance, and even a little comedy.

The end of the civil war is nearing. The northern soldiers though, won't let up. The "Red Legs" as some of these notorious war criminals are called are still pillaging,and plundering the homesteads in the territory and...killing the families.Wales is a victim of these brutal attacks, his house burned to the ground and his wife and son viciously attacked and murdered. He joins up with a group of others who are out to avenge their families and they become a notorious group. When they are offered a deal at the end of the war, they all turn themselves in..all but one...Josey Wales!

Ride with Josey(everyone else does) across the beautiful western vistas, as he takes on the "Red Legs" that are after him, saves a family from "Commancheros", makes friends with the Indians, and wears his heart on his sleeve as along the way he seems to attract a group of outcasts, including a dog, that he just can't leave behind.

Clint surrounds himself with the most marvelous cast, including Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney, John Vernon and Chief Dan George who provides many of the lighter moments in this action packed western.

If you are already a fan of this film made in 1976 and wondering about the quality of the transfer, you will be thrilled by the way it looks and sounds. The picture in widescreen is gorgeous. All scenes including the darker and nighttime are sharp and clear. Colors are vibrant. The soundtrack remastered in 5.1 Dolby Digital is also wonderful. From the pounding hooves of the racing horses, to the rain, to the music and the dialouge,you won't miss a thing.It's a dual-layer format, but I did not notice any of those little pauses that casues sometimes."Extras" are in the way of production notes only. There are some interesting facts on how Eastwood came to read the book and make the film.

What?! You haven't seen this yet??? It's a must for any Eastwood or Western fan! Go for it. "Now, Spit!"..Chief Dan George......Enjoy..Laurie

Clint multi-packs:The Gauntlet/True Crime,
The Clint Eastwood Collection (In the Line of Fire/Unforgiven/Bronco Billy/Dirty Harry/The Outlaw Josey Wales/The Beguiled),City Hall/Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil*actually a John Cusak double feature but Midnight in the Garden of Eveil is directed by Clint

As I am not ordinarily a fan of westerns, I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed this film. It was an engrossing and entertaining movie, and, unlike others in this genre, it is an intelligent and well thought out film.

The film tells the story of a Missouri farmer who, towards the end of the Civil War, finds his home overrun by renegade union soldiers who set fire to his homestead, kill his wife and son, and leave him for dead. After burying his family, he joins a group of confederate guerillas who have suffered similar tragedies. Ultimately, the war ends and their leader brings them in for surrender, except for Josey Wales, who watches their surrender from afar. Good thing he did not join them, as their surrender turns into an execution by the very same men who had pillaged his home and killed his family.

Wales escapes only to be relentlessly hunted down by the very men who had wronged him, as well as by bounty hunters who want that five thousand dollar reward offered for his capture. Wales rides on to escape them, and along his travels acquires a motley entourage whom he befriends and who befriend him. What happens on his journey is classic Eastwood.

Clint Eastwood plays his role as a stoic man of few words, while Chief Dan George is an absolute delight as part of Wales' entourage. The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent. Of course, Sandra Locke, as Eastwood's real life main squeeze at the time, got star billing, even though her role was one of the smaller ones and her performance the least impressive of the supporting cast.

This remains one of the more entertaining films in this genre. It also made Hollywood sit up and take serious notice of Eastwood as a major force in the film industry.

While he was still a star and hero on the long-running TV western Wagon Train, Clint Eastwood emerged on the Hollywood scene in western-theme movies, specifically his trio of "spaghetti westerns" with director Sergi Leone, the best being "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly".
After establishing another remarkable character in Dirty Harry, Clint returns to his western "roots" as the vengeful Josie Wales, in "The Outlaw Josie Wales". This is Clint's 31st film and his fifth as a director. Actually, the film was started with a different director, Philip Kaufman of "The Right Stuff" fame. After numerous and intractable arguments over the interpretation of the film, Clint fired his director a week into shooting and took over directorship himself. We will never know what sort of film Mr. Kaufman would have produced, but Eastwood's final product is a true gem in western filmmaking.

In Eastwood's western trilogy he was known only as "the man with no name", a loner who generously dispensed his form of western justice at the barrel of a gun (or two). There was not much character development. We don't learn what drives the man or what he feels inside. With Josie Wales, Clint plows new ground, as he plumbs the emotions of the vengeful Wales. He builds insights into the character and feelings of Wales, a man with a name AND feelings. This makes the movie more than a mere "shoot 'em up", and adds depth and meaning to the film. Eastwood does much the same and more, with his 1990 blockbuster (and his last western) "Unforgiven", with Oscar results.

Josie Wales can be viewed with interest and pleasure on several different levels. There is of course the "vengeful man" theme that is the movie's backbone. Then there is the multi-cultural theme, where instead of going it alone, one man against many, Wales has a collection of "family" that collects as the movie progresses: an old Indian Chief, a talkative Indian "Squaw", a grandmother and her granddaughter (Sandra Locke, whom Clint would have an affair with that would end his marriage to his wife Maggie), and finally a collection of townies from a dying silver mining town. Finally, there is the "healing" theme, namely, how does a man who suffers the violent loss of his wife, son, and home, deal with his vengeful anger, emotional loss, and begin to heal.

Mere trivia, but interesting: Clint Eastwood never once shoots and kills a Native American Indian in any of his western films. Instead of battling indians as do most of the other western film stars, Eastwood's charcters build alliances with the Natives, learning to live in peaceful co-existance rather than a state of perpetual war.

Clearly, this is Eastwood's best western up to this point in his career. It is definately worth a "look" and my guess is that it will become one of your favorite westerns.

Jim "Konedog" Koenig

Of all the years and several formats for this movie to be released in...this IS the best it has ever looked and sounded! Over the years (even DVD) the transfers have been soft and lacking detail. Well, this blu-ray brings back what has been missing all these years. This is one stunning transfer! The soundtrack DTS-HD 5.1 really sounds like surround for the first time. In the past, it seemed like three channel...but now all the speakers are employed (and the subwoofer is used).
If you are a fan of this classic and love blu-ray, upgrade today! Throw out that old DVD and do your eyes (and ears) a favor and get this version. I am still shocked how well this film from 1976 looks! It finally shines!!
I can't believe what I have been missing all these years! Great restoration job.

Aside from his multi-Oscar-winning 1992 film UNFORGIVEN, THE OUTLAW JOSIE WALES, released in the summer of 1976, may very well be the pinnacle of Clint Eastwood's career both in front of and behind the camera. This is an epic western where Eastwood leaves behind the Man With No Name persona he had cultivated in the spaghetti westerns of director Sergio Leone in the 1960s. For here, he is a man with a name...and a conscience to go along with it.

Eastwood's Josie Wales is a Missouri farmer making out a quiet life for himself amidst the turbulent end of the Civil War who must watch in horror as marauding Union men tear up his land and kill his family. Joining up with a group of Confederate rebels to "set things right", Eastwood soon finds himself on the run from a Union detachment, led by his former commander (John Vernon) and a ruthless soldier (Bill McKinney, who portrayed one of the evil mountain men in DELIVERANCE). In his travails through the Southwest, he makes friends with a wise old Comanche (Chief Dan George) and makes an effort to find peace. But when the Union men close in on him, then he is forced to resort to violence.

A fairly long film, at 135 minutes, and riddled with scenes of occasional violent gunplay and sex scenes, THE OUTLAW JOSIE WALES nevertheless shows a more human side to Eastwood's persona than the more modern-day Dirty Harry films. This is in large part due to the complexity of the character as laid out in the screenplay by Phil Kaufman (who was the original director, but was replaced by Eastwood after the two men clashed) and Sonia Chernus, from Forrest Carter's book "Gone To Texas." It also gives Eastwood a chance to stretch himself as an actor with some memorable one-liners, particularly in a scene involving a bounty hunter (John Davis Chandler):

BOUNTY HUNTER: "You're wanted, Wales."
WALES: "Reckon I'm right popular. You a bounty hunter?"
BOUNTY HUNTER: "A man's gotta do somethin' for a livin' these days."
WALES: "Dyin' ain't much of a livin', boy."

As is commonplace with Eastwood as a director, he gives some of his favorite fellow actors prime supporting roles for their talents, George in particular, but also Vernon, whose role as a sympathetic heavy is as rich in complexities as Eastwood's Josie Wales. John Quade, John Mitchum, Royal Dano, Sondra Locke (soon to be Eastwood's beau), Matt Clark, and Paula Trueman are among the other actors that give good support to Eastwood.

Filmed in various parts of California, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada and complete with a superb score by Jerry Fielding, who was nominated for an Oscar here (as he had been on THE WILD BUNCH and STRAW DOGS), THE OUTLAW JOSIE WALES proved not only the magnitude of Eastwood's talents, but also the durability of the western genre in the morally complex world of post-Vietnam America. It is strongly recommended.

When I first saw "The Outlaw Josey Wales", probably the first couple of times, I saw it the way I'd expect that a lot of young people in the 1980s, the first "video" generation, saw it - a great funny action movie that could provide a larger number of potential drinking games than just about any film you could think of: take a drink whenever Josie (Clint Eastwood) spits tobacco; take a drink whenever Josey kills someone; take a drink whenever anybody utters the words "Josey Wales", whenever Josey says "I reckon" or "reckon so", etc. And it's absolutely possible and acceptable to me to watch the movie with that sort of fun-movie mentality. Philip Kaufman's screenplay, from Forrest Carter's novel, takes full advantage of the opportunities for fun and Eastwood doesn't shy away from the broad comedy and "cool" lines.

But gradually over the years I've come to see this Civil War revenge and redemption story as something a lot more than just a movie full of quotable lines and great action sequences - it's the film that first signalled that Eastwood was potentially a master, and one interested in more than just mindless violence and coolness. "Josey Wales" begins with a scene of pastoral, homey tranquility - a Missouri farmer with his young son plowing the ground under a beautiful autumn sun (the opening shot is one of the nicest in Eastwood's filmography), his angelic wife appearing dream-like in a dappled glade, telling the son to come wash up - and then tragedy strikes. In minutes, Josey's dreams and whole life are shattered, and he becomes a man bent on vengeance against the "redlegs" (Union-sympathizing raiders) who have killed his family and burned his home. He learns to shoot, and he joins up with a band of marauders headed by Fletcher (John Vernon).

All of this happens in the pre-credits sequence. During that montage as the screen goes to a blue-tinted, unsaturated look the exploits of Fletcher's guerilla warriors are shown; by the time it ends and we get to the film proper, they're over as is the war. We also hear for the first time Jerry Fielding's magnificent score, one of the greatest in American film history, in its wonderful drum-and-fife mode redolent of old Civil War marching tunes. Josey has grown a beard to partially cover the scar he suffered being attacked by the redlegs, and he has clearly become a fearsome gunfighter, and Fletcher has decided, as leader of the last band of holdouts, hungry and on the run and hopeless, to surrender. His men follow suit.

But Josey won't surrender, which turns out to be a good call on his part as his comrades are butchered by what turn out to be more redlegs under the command of Terrill (Bill McKinney), the same man who had commanded the raid on Josey's farm. Josey rides into the camp as the massacre is beginning and manages to kill a large number of the soldiers with a commandeered Gatling gun but his group are all dead except for the seriously wounded young Jamie (Sam Bottoms) and Fletcher, who has been pressed into Union service after unwittingly betraying his men. Josie rescues Jamie, swears vengeance on Fletcher and Terrill, and rides away, planning first to head to Indian Territory where he thinks he can get help for Jamie.

And the rest of the film becomes an event-filled journey towards Texas or Mexico (it's often not clear what, if any, final destination Josey has in mind) as Josey finds and loses companions, becoming bound up in a gradual community of similarly lost souls with him as the restless, never-named leader. Jamie doesn't make it very far but Josey soon gains an old Cheyenne, Lone Watie (the absolutely amazing Chief Dan George) as his most faithful companion and it's soon apparent that his actual vengeance will keep taking a back seat as he takes care of and fights for the growing surrogate family of misfits that eventually come to make a home on a deserted ranch in Texas. Finally in the last third of the movie, after making peace with the Comanche chief, Ten Bears (Will Sampson), it seems that Josie and his little community will have peace, and Josie himself seems on the verge of losing his desire to keep up the fight, but the redlegs have pursued and there must be one last showdown...

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, this is one of those great mixtures of comedy, action and drama that one can easily appreciate on a very simple level - there are very few westerns with more memorable dialogue -- but that for me at least keeps growing in depth and feeling. Josey doesn't say too much, most of the time, but his interactions with Lone Watie are always amusing and sometimes hilarious; he inverts the typical convention of the stoic Indian here by having his two main native characters (the other, Little Moonlisht, a young woman who Josey rescues from being enslaved by two trappers at a trading post) talkative and expressive while the white hero is taciturn and sullen much of the time. And Josey's way with guns is always impressive and also frequently engenders humor, as when he explains the order of shooting to Lone Watie after a gunfight in a small town where Josie was surprised by four Union soldiers (a bit of dialogue referenced to darker effect in "Unforgiven"). The story that's being told, though, belies the lighter tone of much of the early part of the film, and this is what sticks with me the most after a half-dozen viewings.

Much is said of Eastwood's two primary and obvious influences, particularly on the western and action elements in his career - Sergio Leone and Don Siegel - but here the presiding spirit is clearly John Ford, and amazingly enough in only his second western and fifth film as director, Clint manages to make something that approaches the best of that master's work. The Ford themes of the individual struggling to be both part of the new west of community and family and the lone frontiersman, and the ambivalent relations between races in "The Searchers" are reflected in "Josey Wales"; there's a shot of Josey in the bright doorway of the dark trading post that seems like a direct homage, and Josey's inability to give up his vengeful anger despite having a home, a community, and even a love interest are certainly reminiscent of Ethan Edwards' inner turmoil. And Eastwood and cinematographer Bruce Surtees' feeling for the land and the light are impeccable and have a "classic", unforced beauty that might be unbeaten in the director's work. I already mentioned the score, which at various times evokes Copland (the sequence where Josey and company first wander into a town sounds strikingly like the "Hoedown" section of Rodeo though it's the Josey Wales theme reiterated again) and at others the kinds of old Gospel and popular tunes that populate Ford's work.

But I don't mean to make it sound as if the film is particularly derivative, either; certainly the level of violence in the film is very much 1970s; the cynical and nihilistic attitude of Josey himself is at a remove from Wayne's Ethan Edwards, or any Ford character I can think of; and the dusty and decrepit western towns and the dark interior lighting certainly are more "modern", not at all "classic Hollywood" and would become themselves Eastwood trademarks. And the travelogue feeling and the unhurried pacing are also typical of the director's style; few western directors are as willing to allow their main "action" storyline take a back seat so often, and so willing to build to a climax in which the outcome really does remain uncertain up to the very end. Josey may be an extraordinary gunfighter but he's not the Man With No Name - he is a widower, a Missourian, a troubled and flawed man, and at the end we can't be certain in fact whether he will live to see the happiness which, finally, he seems willing to allow himself.

There are some small faults - the oft-derided Sondra Locke isn't in my opinion terrible, but she certainly doesn't bring anything to the film that any number of better actresses wouldn't have - thankfully her role is fairly small; and though I like the resolution more all the time, still I think the pacing in the last act is a little too unhurried even for a lover of films that take their own sweet time. But these are minor issues in a remarkable film that gathers all kinds of disparate influences and emotional elements - from Mark Twain, to Ford, to Siegel, Civil War to frontier, from broad comedy to Leone-esque stylized violence and finally to a deserved sentimentality and feeling that few of Eastwood's contemporaries can carry off without getting maudlin or trying for an unneeded transcendence.

Good movie, and in many ways it is a parody of the Western, with the mysterious stranger helping devout pioneers seeking the fruitful valley of their dreams in the west. One line captures this, as a local saloon "lady" says to one settler in an exaggerated accent: "Well ah do declare! Aren't you Mary McCory whose son had a ranch in Hidden Valley up at Blood Butte?" (not an exact transcript but you get the parody of stereotypical Western cliches). And yet Eastwood is able to milk them profitably. When challenged by a bounty hunter who justifies his occupation thus: "A man's got to do something for a living these days," Josey Wales retorts "Dyin' ain't much of a living boy".

Eastwood is also politically incorrect, just as he was in the "Dirty Harry" classics. For example, when Indian Lone Watie (beautifully played by Chief Dan George) begins describing a long litany of familar Indian woes, Josey Wales falls asleep and starts snoring. When the Indian female character Little Monlight chatters on at length, Wales says "Can't you shut her up?" It is doubtful if such moments would make the screen today, but in 1976, Eastwood pulled them off with unapologetic panache. Yet at the same time, the movie shows profound respect for the Native American, demonstrating the prowess of Lone Watie, Little Moonlight, the female Indian as a fighter, and also Ten Bears the Commanche chief.

In one scene, Little Moonlight saves Josey from a bullet by some quick shooting. He pauses amidst the action and the two gaze at each other briefly, conveying a shared respect, one warrior to another. Such moments are worth immeasurably more than a dozen hours of politically correct speechifying and posturing. There is the briefest hint of corny sentimentality expressed in the encounter with with Chief Ten Bears, played strongly by Will Sampson, but overall the film is remarkably clear-eyed and comes off well.

The words of Ten Bears are classic, evoking an era of hard men, plain-speaking, and unsentimental, elemental clarity- a sharp contrast to today's supposedly more sophisticated, but demonstrably corrupt and shallow "nuance". His mention of "double-tongues" can well describe hypocritical academics, talking heads of the mainstream media, assorted activists, pandering politicians, smug religious clerics and ever more arrogant judges and bureaucrats on all sides of the modern era's political divide.

"It's sad that governments are chiefed by the double-tongues. There is iron in your word of death for all Comanche to see. And so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron, it must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is thus good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death.."

The film works on several levels- as action packed Western, as a commentary, sometimes parody and ultimately a homage to the Western, or as a pointed commentary on the corrupt and cynical society that marginalizes straight-shooting men like Josey Wales, Lone Watie and Ten Bears. Indeed it is clear that Wales has more respect for his Indian opponent than the mealy-mouthed white purveyors of that era's government "spin". It remains to be seen whether the post 9/11 era can still produce men with the clear eyed moral clarity needed to take care of the dirty business that must be taken care of. As Ten Bears says: "No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men."

First off, since Amazon appears to have grouped the reviews for two different DVD editions of this movie together, the one I am reviewing here has the brown cover with a picture of a very angry Eastwood wielding two pistols. It also has "CLINT EASTWOOD COLLECTION" printed across the top.

Others here have reviewed this top-notch movie better than I could, so I'll just give my impressions of the quality of this release.

I don't know how many different DVD versions of this movie were ever released, but as far as I'm concerned, this is the best one, with remastered audio and video. The sound quality is simply superb--I have many DVD movies, and this one is by far the best, both in terms of audio and video quality. Considering it comes in the flimsier fold-out cardboard flap over plastic case, I was surprised at how good the quality of the actual disk is. The picture quality is simply stunning; I don't know how else to adequately describe it. It's the widescreen "letterbox" format, which gives you the entire theater screen including the left and right sides that fullscreen releases chop off in order to fill up the whole screen. Letterbox is the only way to go if you want to see the entire wide picture you get at the theater. Most of you already know this; I only mention it because I know there are still some who do not. This release is dual-layer format and is enhanced for widescreen TVs. The movie itself runs 2 hours and 15 minutes. Special features: Soundtrack remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1. 1976 Documentary "Eastwood In Action" (approx. 8 minutes). 1999 Documentary "Hell Hath No Fury: The Making Of The Outlaw Josey Wales" (approx. 30 minutes and a fascinating look behind the scenes including documentary footage from the making of the movie showing Eastwood in the act of directing). A very brief introduction to the movie itself by Clint Eastwood (approx. 1 minute). Subtitles in English, French, and Spanish. Languages in English and French. Production notes. Theatrical trailer. Scene Access.

Again, I cannot stress how good this edition looks and sounds. Even the darkest scenes are vivid and clear. Image throughout the film is extremely crisp. A very slight pause midway as the player switches layers, but that's normal with the Dual-Layer format, and it was hardly noticeable. The audio is amazing, with gunshots and explosions reverberating through my floorboards. Turned up through a simple decent stereo system, you will *feel* this movie. Whoever did the audio/video remastering did a fantastic job. The best I've ever seen. This would be worth it at twice the price. The only giveaway to the low price is the cardboard-flap-type case. You simply can't go wrong here.

There is something about Clint Eastwood that allows him the luxury of delivering a cheesey macho line without looking like an ass. In a movie full of such lines, Eastwood really shines in this epic western. I have always wondered why the critics never gave this western its due, while normal every day joes continue to give it the thumbs up. I believe the answer lies in the sympathic portrayal of the Confederate outlaw who is Josey Wales. How dare anyone cast anything wearing a Confederate uniform in anything less than an evil light? Moreover, How dare anyone portray Union Soldiers as a bunch of marauding murderers who looted and pillaged their way through a defeated South? These are the type of thoughts likely dancing through the heads of liberal wine drinking cheese eating newspaper types while sitting down to disparage what is Eastwood's best movie.

If this is really what troubles the crtics, then the everyday joes are left ot wonder why. After all, this is one of the first westerns to positively portray the Native American. Gone are the the usual "Indian" stereotypes of broken English, firewater references, and raids on helpless pioneers. In their place, stand references to the Trail of Tears and good hearted attempts to conform with the "white man's world". Furthermore, Josey Wales was never a slave owner but a man seeking vengeance on a rogue group of Union cavalrymen who murdered his family. Taken in its proper context, the war supplies merely a backdrop that allows Josey Wales to develop as a character.

Amidst all the seriousness of vengeance and social commentary regarding the treatment of Native Americans lies several instances of black comedy which keeps the movie from becoming too bitter and preachy. Sure Josey Wales blows away several men with his pistols, but he always makes us laugh by splattering their dead foreheads with tobacco juice, or uttering another of those macho cheesey lines. His elderly side kick supplies a few laughs along the way by bedding a young woman and shoving horny toads in the sleeping face of Josey Wales.

As many times as the Outlaw Josey Wales has been replayed on cable, I guess is the same amount of times I have seen a negative review placed next to its title in the newspaper television guide. With such unfavorable reviews, it's a continued wonder that people continue to discover this film. I guess that in itself is a testament to how good a film this really is.