The Outlaw Josey Wales
(1976)
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As the film opens, Josey Wales is a simple farmer in Missouri. When a vicious band of Union Red Legs, led by Terrill (Bill McKinney), burns his home to the ground, killing his wife and son, Wales joins a gang of Confederate raiders, determined to get revenge. After the Confederacy loses the war, Wales sets out on his own, an outlaw who kills to survive. He eventually meets an old Indian (Chief Dan George, in a wonderfully sympathetic performance) and some other outcasts, and together they seek out a more peaceful existence. But Terrill continues to hunt Wales, and the simple farmer is forced to fight again. Critics did not take Clint Eastwood's THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES seriously in 1976. Today, many consider it one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Here the West is an ugly and brutal place, as it is in Sergio Leone's films, but this is a different kind of Eastwood hero. He has a name, a sense of humor, and a heart. Made in the shadow of Vietnam and Watergate, the film conveys a bitter distrust of government but also a longing to live in peace. Next to UNFORGIVEN, this is the most sweeping and emotionally complex of Eastwood's Westerns. |
Josey's back! But this time he ain't Clint Eastwood — so who cares? Josey is now played by Michael Parks who, in 1966, was plucked from B-movie obscurity to play Adam in John Huston's The Bible … in the Beginning. Tastefully lit or hiding behind the fig leaf of legend in that film, Parks did not go on to glory but sank back into B-movies. This sequel to the Eastwood classic is mainly just a series of shoot-outs. Parks also directs and he shot it in Mexico with an eye to the Latino market — much of the dialogue is in Spanish and the styling is reminiscent of those paella westerns of the seventies.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Bloodthirsty actioner in the star's usual mould; likely to prove unintentionally funny for hardened addicts.