Thread by @SeekerOTL

1. The most impactful Easter Sunday sermon I have ever heard was delivered by Chuck Swindoll. His sermon was a riff on the 1992 western film, Unforgiven, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.

What lesson about Christ could we learn from this dark masterpiece?

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2. William Munny is the film's protagonist, a retired outlaw. He now supports his two children by raising pigs. His late beloved wife had persuaded him to leave behind his life of outlawry, drinking, and fighting.

In a sermon, Swindoll refers to Munny as "Clint Easterless."

3. Facing financial hardship, Easterless decides to pursue a bounty on a man who scarred a prostitute's face in an attack.

He is recruited for the job by a brash young man who goes by the name of the Schofield Kid. The Schofield Kid boldly claims to have killed five men.

4. Easterless then recruits his old partner Ned Logan to the team.

Easterless tells Ned that the young woman had her eyes cut out & her fingers cut off, the same story the Kid told him. Ned responds, "I guess they got it coming."

Both are unaware that story is an exaggeration.

5. Little Bill Daggett, the brutal sheriff of Big Whiskey, imposes strict laws that prevent bounty hunters from pursuing the reward, escalating the conflict.

6. Daggett and his deputies disarm Easterless and beat him. But the bounty hunters persist.

They ambush Daggett's men, and Ned has one of the two men with a bounty on his head in his sights, but he can't pull the trigger. Easterless takes the gun from him and finishes the job.

7. Ned decides he can no longer kill and quits. However, before he can leave the territory, Ned is captured by the deputies. Little Bill tortures Ned so cruelly that the deputies are forced to turn away.

Little Bill is a bad man.

8. Meanwhile, The Schofield Kid ambushes and kills the bounty hunter's 2nd target, Quick Mike, in an outhouse.

Killing is a dirty business.

9. After their two partners are killed, the deputies send a warning by throwing a rock through the window of the saloon where the prostitutes work. In response, the madame of the establishment angrily declares that the two dead men "had it coming."

10. As Easterless and the Kid wait to be paid the bounty, the Kid begins to cry. He admits that he has never killed before. It was not the romantic experience he envisioned: he ingloriously shot an unarmed man on the toilet.

The Thousand Yard Stare

11. As the prostitute with the money approaches, the Kid assuages his guilt by saying, "I guess they had it coming."

Easterless then delivers the film's iconic line: "We all have it coming, Kid."

12. The woman gives the men the money owed and informs them that Ned is dead.

Easterless is shocked.

"What do you mean he's dead? He went south yesterday. He ain't dead."

13. She tells them that Ned was not killed on purpose. Little Bill was just trying to extract info from him.

Ned confessed that Easterless was a former outlaw. He once killed US Marshall.

14. And during the robbery of a railroad by Easterless, an explosion occurred, resulting in the deaths of women and children - collateral damage.

He then takes a swig of liquor, his first drink in years. He prepares himself to seek revenge for the death of his friend.

15. As Easterless approaches the saloon, he is met with a chilling sight - Ned's lifeless body on display, serving as a warning to any would-be bounty hunters who dare to enter Big Whisky.

16. Upon entering, Easterless asks who owns the establishment. When the saloon owner acknowledges Easterless, he is immediately shot down with a blast from a shotgun. Unarmed.

17. Easterless then clears the bar, shooting and killing 5 men in the process.

As Little Bill lies injured on the floor, he tells Easterless that he doesn't deserve to die.

Easterless coldly responds, "Deserves got nothing to do with it," and then shoots him in the head.

18. Easterless warns the remaining cowboys that he has killed women and children and "just about anything that walked or crawled at one time or another" and not to follow him.

He rides off into the night.

19. The ending leaves the audience feeling an empty somberness, pondering whether the violent retribution enacted was truly righteous or merely another dark chapter in an endless cycle of brutality and vengeance.

20. There is a crucial moment early in the film where Davey brings a horse for the injured woman. The screenplay emphasizes that Davey is just a kid and expresses remorse for his involvement.

21. The madame rejects his offer and retaliates by throwing mud at him. Despite their initial sympathy, the other prostitutes are reluctantly drawn into the madame's angry response.

He is unforgiven.

22. The madame sets a bounty on the two men, condemning them to die. Their deaths begetting more deaths in an endless cycle of violence and abject misery in an unforgiving world.

23. Davey is the first man killed by the bounty hunters. His death is long & drawn out for a western, where gunfighters' deaths are usually swift. His pleas & assertions of not being at fault for the original crime force us to grapple with the ambiguities of vigilante justice.

24. Davey was not the man who cut the prostitute. He was only in the room because Quick Mike had called him. Amidst the chaos of Mike assaulting the young woman, Davey's role is unclear.

He didn't deserve to die. That is not justice.

"Deserves got nothing to do with it."

25. Ned had Davey in his sights and let him live, but it was Ned who paid with his life for Davey's murder.

Ned didn't deserve to die.

"Deserves got nothing to do with it."

26. The character who most deserves to die, besides Little Bill, is Clint Easterless. And he knows it. Throughout the movie, he is constantly haunted by the people he has killed.

"It's a hell of a thing, killing a man"

27. A recurring motif in the movie is Little Bill's leaky roof. Little Bill is building his own house, so he is to blame for the defect. He is not a good carpenter. Similarly, Easterless is not a skilled pig farmer. Both men excel in one area—violence.

28. What separates Easterless from Little Bill is the former's desire for redemption. Easterless feels guilt for his past sins and desperately wants to be a better man. However, not only can he not forgive others, he cannot forgive himself.

29. Chuck Swindoll, in his Easter message, points out that this is exactly what a world without Christ's death and ressurection would look like. It is a dreary world of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," offering no hope of ending a cycle of retaliation & violence.

30. Unforgiven was released in 1992. For the next 30 years, the major focus of Eastwood's work has been the psychological, social, and moral ramifications of violence. Such movies as Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, American Sniper, and Gran Torino.

31. Eastwood's last movie, and perhaps the last of his storied career, is Cry Macho. It is the story of a man and a kid on a physical journey through Mexico, and a spiritual quest for redemption.

32. While Eastwood certainly has made some outstanding films in the last 30 years, Unforgiven remains his masterpiece. Meticulously shot, perfectly paced (Oscar for Best Editing), outstanding performances (Oscar for Hackman), and a script that...

33. ...eschews morally righteous cowboys in favor of deeply flawed, morally complex individuals.

The film won a well deserved Oscar for Best Picture. Eastwood winning for Best Director.

34. One of the subtler examples of Eastwood's genius is heard in the quiet intro and coda of Unforgiven. The sublime "Claudia's Theme," composed by Eastwood himself, expertly captures the emotions of sorrow & loss that permeate everything in between.

35. Claudia is the protagonist's deceased wife, a Christian woman who showed the old gunfighter tender mercies and believed he could be a better man. She was a light in a dark world. One he only saw for a brief time, but he'll never forget.

36. /END