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The Outlaw Josey Wales


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Part No:B001BGS16M
Manufacturer:

Warner Home Video

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WARD041097D

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    Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/02/2008 Run time: 135 minutes Rating: Pg

    Clint Eastwood fired the original director, Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff), and took over the reins of this project himself. He may have had a point: this brutal, thoughtful western, a near-tragedy about a Civil War veteran whose past comes looking for him, is probably Eastwood's most mature frontier drama prior to the Oscar winning Unforgiven. Hoping to build a quiet life in a cooperative community of settlers, Eastwood's Wales blames himself when his enemies attack the homestead, and he has to revert to his warrior instincts to help fend off the threat. The jittery intensity of Sondra Locke (who would be Mrs. Eastwood, at least for a while), and the screen-filling charisma of the late Chief Dan George harmonize beautifully with Eastwood, who had finally figured out how to add depth and texture to his stock-in-trade Man of Steel persona. This one may be too short on action to satisfy fans of Eastwood's Dirty Harry films, or of the Italian westerns he made with Sergio Leone, but it's an honorable effort. --David Chute

    Clint Eastwood fired the original director, Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff), and took over the reins of this project himself. He may have had a point: this brutal, thoughtful western, a near-tragedy about a Civil War veteran whose past comes looking for him, is probably Eastwood's most mature frontier drama prior to the Oscar winning Unforgiven. Hoping to build a quiet life in a cooperative community of settlers, Eastwood's Wales blames himself when his enemies attack the homestead, and he has to revert to his warrior instincts to help fend off the threat. The jittery intensity of Sondra Locke (who would be Mrs. Eastwood, at least for a while), and the screen-filling charisma of the late Chief Dan George harmonize beautifully with Eastwood, who had finally figured out how to add depth and texture to his stock-in-trade Man of Steel persona. This one may be too short on action to satisfy fans of Eastwood's Dirty Harry films, or of the Italian westerns he made with Sergio Leone, but it's an honorable effort. --David Chute


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    All Other Movies Are Rated By This One2010-07-275 / 5
    When ever I am rating a movie, it always rated in this manner..."It's no Outlaw Josey Wales"
    "I owe him that."2010-07-265 / 5
    SPOILERS INCLUDED

    As both Director and Actor, Clint Eastwood transcended his colorful persona as a hero of Spaghetti Westerns in this 1976 classic, deemed a "culturally significant" entry into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Intelligent, taking itself seriously, though never grim, and with flashes of warmth and humor, this film is a must-see experience.

    THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES opens at some time during the "Border War" Era of 1854 and 1861, when Pro-Slavery Missourians and Kansas Free-Soilers did battle over the eventual "Slave or Free?" fate of the Kansas Territory. This pre-Civil War Civil War was bitter, bloody, and intensely personal, all the more so for being telescoped into a small geographic area. Both Missouri and Kansas maintained rival governments. Internal strife was common (Lawrence Kansas was burned by Pro-Slavery elements from Lecompton the "other" capital), and cross-border raids consumed innocent lives.

    And so we are introduced to Josey Wales, a Missouri farmer who is working his land alone in happy domesticity with his pretty wife and young son. There is no evidence that Wales is a slaveowner (and in fact, the film's only real flaw is that African-Americans do not figure in the story at all).

    Interestingly, the "real" Josey Wales was a Missouri man named Wilson, the alias Wales uses at one point in the film, though whether this is coincidental is never addressed.

    One bright afternoon, Josey Wales returns from his fields to discover a gang of Kansas raiders, the Redlegs, burning his farmstead. They rape his wife before his eyes and kill his son. He is struck down by Terrell, the leader of the raiding party, who slashes him with a sword, leaving him for dead.

    Burying his family the next day, he is found by a group of Missourians led by Fletcher (John Vernon), who promise him vengeance for his family. Wales rides with them. A montage of raids progresses into a montage of Civil War battles, ending with Fletcher's calling his men together to announce that Lee has surrendered at Appomattox, and that they have been offered amnesty. What no one realizes is that Fletcher has been bribed to bring his men in. What Fletcher does not realize is that he will be surrendering to now- Captain Terrell of the Union Army. Josey Wales refuses to surrender. When the others do, they are shot down by Terrell, leaving only Fletcher alive. This scene begs the question of whether such occurrences were frequent, but that they occurred at all is certainly possible.

    Josey Wales rides off with a price on his head. pursued by Terrell's men and Fletcher. Although Wales wishes to be left in isolation he quickly picks up traveling companions---first, a fellow Confederate who dies of his wounds, then Chief Lone Watie (Chief Dan George), a Cherokee Indian who tells Wales, "I didn't surrender neither, but they captured my horse and made him surrender." Shortly thereafter, they rescue a Navajo girl, Moonlight, from being raped. The three are joined by a mangy dog.

    As they all head south toward Mexico, they hear growing rumors of Wales' fearsomeness---he has killed twenty men, then sixty---and is being sought throughout the region not only by Terrell and Fletcher, but by Union soldiers and bounty hunters. For his part, Josey Wales just wishes to meet his fate alone, but at heart a decent man, he cannot bring himself to abandon his ragtag "family." This "family" soon grows again, as he makes the acquaintance of Lorelei (Sondra Locke, with whom Eastwood was to have a very long relationship starting during this picture) and her crabby old grandmother, whom he rescues from a gang of thieves. Although overly opinionated Grandma is a Jayhawker whose deceased son fought with the Redlegs, she invites Josey and his company to share in the good life awaiting them at her son's now-abandoned Crooked River Ranch.

    Unfortunately, Wales cannot outride his past. Although he makes peace with the Comanche war chief Ten Bears, he is found by Terrell and Fletcher, and must settle old scores---and heal old scars.

    At 2 1/2 hours THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES is an epic. Violent, but never gratuitous, the film paints a realistic portrait of an era of confusion and dislocation. The movie's sympathetic portrayal of differing groups overcoming that which divides them to work together, and it's innate message of tolerance, is powerful and comes straight out of the book Gone to Texas, written by Forrest Carter (Carter was a Klansman who was drummed out of that organization for decency---Eastwood claims not to have known this while making the movie).

    All in all, the message is that we can change, grow and live happily together, if not forever after then at least for as long as we are given.
    Eastwood's Greatest Western2010-07-085 / 5
    The Outlaw Josey Wales is Clint Eastwood's greatest Western and perhaps his greatest movie. The movie is about a farmer (Eastwood as Josey Wales) who's family is brutally murdered by Union soldiers during the Civil War.
    Wales declares revenge and joins a renegade group of militia men fighting for the South.
    He becomes a skilled six shooter with a bounty on his head and uses the survival skills he's learned to get himself out of a number of precarious situations.
    Along the way he attracts a group of outcasts as they head West and becomes the glue that bands them all together.
    There are a number of mixed metaphors in the film and although Wales is a tough and sometimes nasty individual, one can't help cheering for him even as he outsmarts and kills those who are out to kill or capture him.
    You frequently feel a sense of relief and compassion as Wales shoots his way out of trouble, most times with the assistance of the outcasts he travels with.
    In the next moment though you're reminded of the brutality of the situation and the disregard he has for those who try to stop him as he spits a wad of beef jerky on their foreheads.
    He's never fully at peace throughout his journey even after he settles down with his traveling group on land that the Comanche indians allow them to to live on. Just as you think Eastwood's Wales is ready to settle down for good, he has flashbacks of the brutal murder of his family and realizes he must continue fighting. He finally meets up with the "Red Legs" Union soldier (named for the reddish brown leather leggings they wore) toward the end of the movie and psychologically tortures him by firing his empty pistols at him until they meet face to face.

    The only negative is the length of the movie, especially if you watch it on TV with the commercials. Other than Sondra Locke, the other actors are type cast wonderfully.
    A crucial turning point at the amazing career of Mr. Clint Eastwood!2010-06-015 / 5

    The outlaw Jossey Wales remarks like no other film a before and an after into the impressive artistic trajectory of this legendary director.

    After his family has been massacred in that brutal initial by the Red legs sequence, a sinister band of cutthroats allied with the Union army. So Wales joins the Confederacy to avenge their deaths. But after the war all the bunch surrenders to the victorious Union except him.

    The film is a clear allusion to these Post Vietnam years in which nothing was so clear, where the flags covered the red battlefield accompanied with tunes of glory, amazing speeches and beautiful badges.

    Wales suffers the transformation (like the iron reaching his melting point) from a humble farmer to a non believer outlaw. He tries to isolate himself just to find for his surprise there are another reasons to live and fight. Fight and redemption; bliss and ethical justice are his own inner voices.

    The film that definitively turned on a landmark in his career. A masterpiece all the way through.
    An intelligent and surprisingly poignant film2010-05-115 / 5
    I saw this in the theatre when it first came out and have always tuned in on it whenever I discovered it channel-surfing. It's a great, gritty western that puts you out there in the wilderness, but without using all the sprawling, gratuitous scenery shots you find in so many other films. The story avoids ending up as just a typical revenge tale for many reasons; the variety of characters met along the way, the period of the story - the end of a long Civil War, which left its devastation in the human soul as well as the towns and lands, the ongoing Native American tragedy and the Western Expansion. One can almost get side-tracked from the main plot line except that it all comes together at the end, as the friendships that have been established and the hard experiences that have bonded them culminate in a tense bar room scene that is a brilliant display of unspoken communication between both life-long friends and bitter enemies at the same time. Clint Eastwood pays his audience a great service by letting them in on the secret and you're holding your breath right there with him. Character development, something so ignored in films all too much in favor of explosions and special effects, really makes this piece shine.

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