The Outlaw Josey Wales

Buy This Item The Outlaw Josey Wales by Warner Home Video  Available from Amazon  $19.98  on 11-26-2008     During the Civil War, Union "Redlegs" attack Southerner Josey Wales's dirt farm and wipe out his family. Seeking vengeance, Wales throws in with a company of Reb guerrillas. Tagged as a renegade after the surrender, he flees west into the vastness of the Indian Territories, where, quite unintentionally, he finds himself cast as the straight-shooting paterfamilias of an ever-growing, spectacularly motley community of misfits and castaways. Which is to say, Josey's personal quest for survival and something like peace of mind evolves into a funky, multicultural allegory of the healing of America.<p> <I>The Outlaw Josey Wales</I> (1976), Clint Eastwood's 31st film as an actor, 20th as international star, and 5th as director, was the first to win him widespread respect. Critics had grumbled when the producer-star replaced Philip Kaufman (<I>The Right Stuff</I>) in the director's chair a week into shooting. They ended up cheering when Eastwood delivered both his most sympathetic performance to date and--with the heroic collaboration of cinematographer Bruce Surtees--an impressive Panavision epic that stresses the scruffiness, rather than the scenic splendors, of frontier life.<p> Though it's been honored with a place in the National Film Registry, <I>Josey Wales</I> is good, not great, Eastwood. The big-gun fetishism can get tiresome, and too many characters exist only to serve as six-gun (and at one point Gatling gun) fodder. But mostly the film is agreeably eccentric, and almost furtively sweet in spirit--a key transitional title in the Eastwood filmography, and one of his most entertaining. <I>--Richard T. Jameson</I> Reader Reviews One of the best Old West movies Clint ever did. Can't really call it a cowboy movie, but great just the same.

The Outlaw Josey Wales Available from Amazon Price: $19.98 Updated on 11-26-2008.

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