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The Outlaw Josey Wales

Actor(s): Clint Eastwood, Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney, John Vernon
Director(s): Clint Eastwood
34

Movie Details

MPAA Rating: PG
Content Advisory: Violence, Adult Situations, Rape & Sexual Abuse, Not For Children
Movie Release: 1976
DVD Release: 11/20/2001
Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
Edition: Dual Layered,Restored/Remastered,Special Collection
Audio Tracks: English, French
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
SwapaDVD Credits: 1
Number of Discs: 1
Run Time: 2 hrs 15 mins
Studio: Warner Home Video
Members Wishing: 13
Genres: Western, Revisionist Western, Outlaw (Gunfighter) Film
See Also: The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Outlaw Josey Wales [With BBQ Book], The Outlaw Josey Wales [With Golf Book], The Outlaw Josey Wales

DVD Synopsis

Clint Eastwood's fifth film as a director and eighth Western as a star (ninth if you count Paint Your Wagon), The Outlaw Josey Wales chronicles the hero's violent journey westward after the Civil War. With fresh memoris of his family's slaughter by Red Leg soldier Terrill (Bill McKinney), Confederate Josey Wales (Eastwood) refuses to join his captain Fletcher (John Vernon) and the rest of his comrades in surrender to a U.S. Army regiment. Deemed a dangerous outlaw after a bloody one-man battle with that regiment, Josey is pursued by U.S. cavalry soldiers led by the unwilling Fletcher and the murderous Terrill, as well as by bounty hunters who eventually learn how coolly lethal Wales can be. Despite his desire to remain a lone fugitive, Josey soon has a crew of travelling companions that includes Cherokee Lone Watie (Chief Dan George) and the pretty Laura Lee (Sondra Locke) and her vigorous Grandma Sarah (Paula Trueman), settlers on their way to a ranch near ghost town Santa Rio. The few Santa Rio residents welcome the group, but their peace and Josey's burgeoning romance with Laura Lee are soon interrupted by Terrill's arrival. A skillfully violent man of few, well-chosen words, Josey Wales resembles Eastwood's previous Western heroes in Sergio Leone's trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966). However, the emphasis on friends and family served notice that, in the words of one critic, "the Man With No Name doesn't live here anymore." Indeed, Josey Wales would be Eastwood's last western before 1985's Pale Rider. Although it did not garner similar critical praise when it was released, Eastwood considers The Outlaw Josey Wales to be the equal of the Oscar-winning Unforgiven (1992). ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Actors

Clint Eastwood - Josey Wales
Chief Dan George - Lone Watie
Sondra Locke - Laura Lee
Bill McKinney - Terrill
John Vernon - Fletcher

Editorial Review of DVD

The Outlaw Josey Wales originally appeared on DVD in 1999, in a stripped-down edition from a film-to-video transfer dating from the mid-'90s, without any special features to speak of. In 2001, a new edition appeared without much fanfare as part of Warner Home Video's "Clint Eastwood Collection." The newer release is definitive, built on a sharper, brighter, and more detailed transfer (in the movie's widescreen 2.35-to-1 aspect ratio) of the movie, with much truer color; the older disc had a widescreen transfer with some problems in color tone and fuzziness in the finer details, which are all solved here. The advantages will be immediately apparent to anyone with a monitor bigger than 20 inches, and the bigger the better. Additionally, the disc includes a wealth of information and support materials that will please fans of Eastwood and this picture. The most basic component is the onscreen printed text explaining how the original story -- of which 75 copies had been printed, through a small publisher -- made its way unsolicited to Eastwood, and ultimately into production; and some aspects of the casting are covered, though one wishes that there had been more attention paid to the non-Native American players, fascinating though the latter are onscreen. The visual supplements, in addition to a new introductory monologue by Eastwood talking about the movie, also include the seven-minute featurette "Eastwood in Action," a 1976 promotional film; and "Hell Hath No Fury: The Making of The Outlaw Josey Wales," a much more ambitious 30-minute documentary from 1999, telling of the movie's history and production. It's a little too self-congratulatory in tone at times, but it also answers a lot of questions (as well as repeating some material) from the text panels, and it's great to see the surviving cast members talk appreciatively of their work and that of departed performers such as Chief Dan George; and Eastwood has some fun at the end of the short. The DVD goes to the simple, straightforward menu automatically on start-up, and the menus go to two easy-to-access layers of selection, including the language choices (English, French) and subtitles, and the special features. The 135-minute movie has been broken into 35 well-positioned chapters. The under-twenty-dollars price is also very attractive, especially given the extras that have been added. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Member Movie Reviews

Kendra M. (KendraM) from NASHVILLE, TN wrote on 5/19/2008...

The Outlaw Josey Wales is considered by some to be the greatest western. I agree.

A great western should have a collection of strong key elements, and Josey Wales has them all. The setting is the savage Civil War in Missouri and Kansas where atrocities and outrages were perpetrated by irregulars of both sides. Folks at the time called these criminals and guerrillas "bushwackers". The fighting in this theater of the Civil War is not commonly known and was particularly ugly and violent. Most actions were small unit affairs, with people who were well known to one another before the war fighting under opposing flags. Violence and crimes against civilians was common as both legitimate armies used irregulars to terrorize the civilian population. The massacre at Centralia, Missouri, September 27, 1864 was perpetrated by Bloody Bill Anderson and his men. There is no mention of this event in the film, of course, as there could be no sympathy for anyone who had had a part in that abomination.

Josey Wales captures the ugliness and horror of those times and provides a motivator to the title character when his family is murdered by Kansas Union irregulars. Wales is enraged and joins Bloody Bill Anderson's Confederate guerrilla outfit. When the War ends, they are one of the last organized Confederate units to surrender (at least according to the film). Wales' comrades surrender themselves at a Union camp, but Josey refuses. But everything is not as it seems and as the men surrender their arms and take the Oath of Allegiance to the Union, they are viciously murdered in cold blood. It turns out that the same unit that has just killed his fellow Confederates is the very same that had killed his family several years before. And so the chase begins... Wales is now the "Outlaw Josey Wales" running from bounty hunters and every male in the territory with a gun not to mention the Union army.

Josey Wales is played by Clint Eastwood in one his best performances. The character is very much like the "Man with no name" from his Spaghetti Western days. Closer to "Blondie" in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly than the silent gunslinger of "Pale Rider", Wales is essentially a good man driven to revenge and violence by circumstances. He is the everyman of the Civil War dragged into the maelstrom of events. As he runs from his pursuers he picks up a ragtag crew of fascinating characters who ride with him, eventually heading for southern Texas. Along the way there are gunfights, suspense, and lots of action.

A great western should have certain components including:

* beautiful desert scenery
* a good story line
* small ramshackle frontier towns
* a hero or anti-hero with strong and understandable motivations
* guns, ideally pistols
* cool hats
* indians
* lots of horses
* rotten villains

Outlaw Josey Wales was directed by Eastwood, too. Sandra Locke, Chief Dan George, and John Vernon co-star.

Wales is an avenger as he rides across deserts and through broken down frontier towns. He has no options, but to find a place to hide, or just keep on riding forever. Every shooting that involve him is self-defense or in the defense of others who cannot defend themselves. He is a hero, an unsurrendered Confederate partisan, haunted by the senseless murder of his family.

Josey Wales has beautiful scenery, lots of horses and pistols, rotten villains who deserve to get shot (and generally do), suffering innocents who need protection, and one of the coolest hats in American cinema history.

Josey Wales' hat is stained with sweat, it's a deep Confederate Gray with a wide and slightly upturned brim. Eastwood hides his eyes under the brim of this hat, and when he slightly lifts his head to look at someone - they know quickly that Wales is not a man to be trifled with. He has a sense of honor and obligation to others, but has no compunction in shooting those who are hunting him or are fixin' to hurt his friends.

There is a touching moment after Eastwood and his friends have arrived at their Texas destination. Sondra Locke, dressed in a fine white dress, talks about how beautiful the clouds look. She represents the stability, and happiness of his pre-war life and the look of sadness and dissociation that Eastwood delivers is a fine and sad one. After all of his war-fighting, his losses, and the personal toll that the War has taken, Josey Wales must try very hard to find a place for himself in a peaceful and stable post-war environment. Killing is easy now for him; it's living without violence that will be so challenging. One of the more powerful aspects of his character is that he so wants to try.