The Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976.
Directed by Clint Eastwood.
Starring Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, John Vernon, Bill McKinney, Chief Dan George, Will Sampson, Royal Dano, Paula Trueman, John Russell, and Sam Bottoms.
SYNOPSIS:
A farmer whose family is murdered by Union soldiers during the civil war seeks revenge, picking up a few waifs and strays on the way.
Not only did Clint Eastwood help reinvent the western during the 1960s with the Dollars trilogy he made with Sergio Leone, but he did it again in the 1970s with an American production from his own Malpaso Company and Warner Bros. with the less influential, but no less notable The Outlaw Josey Wales in 1976.
Eastwood plays the titular Josey Wales, an Missouri farmer who lives a quiet life with his wife and son on their remote farm. After his farmhouse is torched and his family murdered by Union soldiers from the north, Wales hooks up with a group of Confederate bushwhackers, led by ‘Bloody Bill’ Anderson (John Russell), in order to take revenge by slaughtering any Unionists and sympathisers they encounter.
Once the war is over, Captain Fletcher (John Vernon) persuades the posse to surrender to the Union army in exchange for amnesty, but they are double-crossed and after the group are massacred, only Fletcher, Wales and the younger Jamie (Sam Bottoms) survive. After Wales and Jamie escape, Fletcher is hired by the Union Senator to hunt them down, but as Wales tries to escape to Texas, a bounty is put on his head and his reputation across the south grows, which helps him pick up various characters along the way to aid in his journey.
Despite earning himself almost legendary status across the south, Josey Wales is a very different character to the ones Clint Eastwood played in his spaghetti westerns. Still quiet and brooding, you get to know more about man by his interactions with those he meets along his journey, most notably native American Lone Watie (Chief Dan George), who is there as comic relief but not in a silly way, his remarks and wisecracks often diffusing Eastwood’s simmering rage and making Josey Wales appear more human, rather than the ‘force of nature’ persona of The Man with No Name.
There are others, such as Comanche chief Ten Bears (Will Sampson) who starts off as an antagonist for Wales but becomes an ally, again establishing Wales’ humanity. John Vernon puts in a strong performance as Captain Fletcher who, in the opposite to Ten bears, starts off as an ally but becomes the antagonist, albeit against his will, in a plot that Young Guns 2 would later ‘borrow’ a few elements from to make that movie’s ‘true’ story all the more gripping. Vernon’s massive screen presence is the perfect foil for Eastwood, and although he never goes off the rails like he would in movies like Animal House later on, he fills the screen whenever he is on it and pitches his performance to be just as mean and moody.
With a sharper and more detailed image than ever before, this 4K scan of The Outlaw Josey Wales still looks natural and like how a movie shot on 35mm film should look. Some of the grain has been digitally altered slightly in certain shots, just so the focal point in the image is a little clearer, but not enough to take you out of the moment or for any reason other than a little cosmetic clean-up. As with the recent Dirty Harry 4k UHD release (read our review here), there is a Dolby Atmos audio track as well as the original mono, and like with that movie it is up to you which you prefer, as the Dolby mix is very loud and aggressive but it makes the action scenes a lot more punchy, whereas the mono mix is probably the purists choice for its balance.
Also the same as the Dirty Harry disc, there is an audio commentary by film historian Richard Schickel, archive featurettes about the making of the movie and Clint Eastwood’s westerns, which are all interesting and add perspective. As a movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales is not quite the violent, revenge-driven actioner it could well have been in different hands. It does have those elements, and seeing Clint Eastwood firing pistols without blinking is never not exciting or cool, but instead of an all-out bloodbath the movie is a character piece, letting most of the side characters have their disputes which allows for Josey Wales to be the peacemaker, despite his mission of revenge. Eastwood is magnetic throughout – he has to be, for Josey Wales to pick up so many companions – and offers a different slant from where he was in the previous decade, making The Outlaw Josey Wales something of an oddity, but an essential one.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
