Samuel L Jackson picks his favourite western: “It’s a classic story”
What would an actor’s answer be to the question “What is your favourite western film?” when they’ve starred in one themselves under one of Hollywood’s most legendary directors? They might as well name their own. But not Samuel L Jackson. Despite working on a number of westerns, his favourite remains the one that broke away from all the usual tropes.
Jackson has worked with Quentin Tarantino, starring in his critically and commercially acclaimed The Hateful Eight as the morally ambiguous Major Marquis Warren, which remains one of his most powerful performances. He dominated every scene he was in, whether as an intelligent character or a menacing presence with cold-blooded ruthlessness. His monologue about a personal act of revenge is still enough to send a chill down one’s spine. But for the actor, it’s Clint Eastwood’s 1992 film Unforgiven that ticks all the boxes for being the best western.
Typical westerns rely almost entirely on over-the-top heroism, good beats evil, and lengthy gunfights (and looking stylish while doing it). But not Unforgiven. The film, which stars Eastwood in the lead role of the ageing and retired gunslinger William Munny, refused to leave its audience with surface-level experiences. It wanted them to feel the anguish, moral ambiguity, and thirst for vengeance and violence, but not without making them recognise the price one has to pay for it all. The movie’s plot posed a significant shift in the western genre since, at the time, no other film had dared to exist outside the tried-and-tested mould.
As Munny, after years of farming, embarks on this journey of seeking retribution for others—prostitutes who wanted a couple of cowboys dead after they disfigured one of them out of spite—along with another retired gunslinger, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), he faces death and is unable to remain psychologically aloof in its face. This bare-faced humanity, along with Eastwood’s refusal to dramatise his characters or the plot with unnecessary machismo, is what made Unforgiven relatable in 1992 and maintains its ability to connect with audiences even today.
This explains why Jackson always picks Unforgiven as his favourite western, even during a 2016 interview with Eye for Film, where he was promoting The Hateful Eight. The movie’s narrative boldly redesigned the western drama genre, managing to strike a chord with its audience—a feat that makes Jackson see it as a “classic story”.
“You know, men who reached a point in their lives where they understand the kind of toll they’ve taken as they lived their lives and what the value of life really is. And what it really takes to kill someone and what that toll is on you,” he explained.
It was this drive to be a film narrating the human experience without the rose-tinted glasses that won Unforgiven four Academy Awards at the 65th Oscars in 1993—‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ for Eastwood, ‘Best Supporting Actor’ was bagged by Gene Hackman for playing the notorious Little Bill Daggett, while Joel Cox took home the ‘Best Film Editing’. Of course, that’s minus the critical acclaim, the preserving popularity as the best of the genre, and its status as a shining gem in Eastwood’s long-spanning career of epic masterpieces.
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