Cast: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris

Produced and Directed By; Clint Eastwood

Winner of four Academy Awards, including Best picture, Director, Supporting actor, and Best editing, Clint Eastwood's 1992 masterpiece is a standout from the many Western – cowboy movies we have seen.

In the year 1880, William Munny (Clint Eastwood) is a retired gunner, a widower, now living alone in the middle of the Kansas plains.on a hog farm with his two children. Far away from his home, two men have mercilessly brutalized a defenceless prostitute of the remote Wyoming town of Big Whiskey by cutting up her face. Sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), lets them go scot free. The other "women" of the house want the murderers brought to book. They collect money to offer a reward to whoever kills these two young cowboys.

Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) visits Munny, offering to share a thousand dollar reward with him if he'll help him kill the pair of cowboys. Munny, once a hardened cold blooded gunslinger, hasn't been on a horse in years and can hardly handle a gun for that matter, but that doesn't stop him. With no means of regular finance to support his kids, Munny accepts the job, not so much for the cash, but more importantly as a kind of redemption for him, a good deed for a life of shame he has led in the past. Munny picks up his former partner in crime, an outlaw and now a farmer Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman). The three form a team as they take on the corrupt Sheriff in a spellbinding showdown.

We also have noted gunfighter English Bob (Richard Harris), whose sharp shooting skills have impressed writer, W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek) so much that Saul is writing Bob’s biography. Flouting the ban on firearms possession in Big Whiskey, Little Bill publicly confronts Bob, sending the message to all who dare to come to collect the bounty on the two murderers.

Rating: ****

Reviewed by Verus Ferreira