Unforgiven (1992), directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, concerns itself with examining and reexamining the codes of its genre and calling into question the moral universe of the western film. Exercise

The film opens with the mutilation of a prostitute. Her fellow prostitutes offer a bounty on the two perpetrators of the crime, whom they feel have been insufficiently punished by sheriff Little Bill (Gene Hackman) for their crime. A young would-be gunfighter, the Schofield Kid, offers notorious, but retired, gunfighter, William Munny (Clint Eastwood), a share of the bounty if they work together. Munny, after some refusal, eventually accepts the offer—he needs the money—and recruits former partner, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) as well. First to try for the bounty is English Bob (Richard Harris), but he is driven out of town by the order-loving Little Bill. When Munny and his partners arrive, they run afoul of Little Bill. Ned realizes he is no longer cut out for the violent life of a gunfighter and attempts to return home. Munny and the Kid manage to kill both men and are about to return home when they learn that Ned has been captured and killed by Little Bill. Munny sends the Kid home and rides into town for revenge. He kills Little Bill, as well as a number of deputies and the town pimp, and returns home.

Within this story, the characters themselves continuously tell stories. When the Kid first approaches Munny, he tells an exaggerated version of the prostitute's mutilation, boasts of his own achievements with a gun, and also relates to Munny stories of Munny's past glory (ignominy?). When Munny tells Ned of the bounty, the mutilation story is exaggerated further. On the way to the job, the men reminisce about past exploits. English Bob travels with biographer, Beauchamp, who records Bob's stories and embellishes them himself. Bob's stories are then debunked by Little Bill who relates his own version of the stories. The prostitutes tell a number of lies to their pimp and Little Bill each one creating a slightly different narrative world. When Ned is captured by Little Bill, he initially creates identities for himself, Munny, and the Kid. However, one of the prostitutes tells Munny and the Kid the (apparently) true story that as the beating continued Ned revealed Munny's true identity and told stories of his past exploits. Notably, in the end, when Beauchamp pressures Munny to relate the story of the killing of Little Bill and the deputies, which he has just witnessed, Munny refuses, scaring Beauchamp away.

The act of telling stories in the film becomes a way for the film to examine the codes of the western genre. The story of the prostitute's mutilation provides Munny, Ned, and the Kid with the nominal justification for assassinating the men and accepting the bounty, the justification that they are protecting and revenging the figure of woman. As Robert Warshow says in his landmark 1954 article, "Movie Chronicle: The Westerner," "The Westerner is the last gentleman, and the movies which over and over again tell his story are probably the last art form in which the concept of honor retains its strength" (457). However, in Unforgiven, this gentlemanly act of protecting a woman provides a flimsy justification at best; it weakness is illustrated by the need for exaggeration in the story each time it is told. In the film, Munny, Ned, and the Kid really attempt the assassination for selfish goals: to attain glory, to recapture former glory, or simply for the money. This last point somewhat contradicts Warshow's statement that the Westerner is the man of leisure, that money and material wealth provide only the impetus for the plot in the western (455); according to Warshow, the motivation for the Westerner is selfish, to fulfill his calling (457). While it is to some degree true that material gain is secondary in Unforgiven, William Munny really does need money in the film; he has a family and farm to support. His calling is no longer gunfighting. He has rejected that life and returns to it only for what it can provide him—a chance to start over with his family. In the epilogue, the film refuses to make certain that this is indeed what Munny has done. Instead, it only relates in yet another story that he might have gone to San Francisco and become successful in dry goods. The film refuses any attempt at certainty of narrative and convention in the film.

The "gentleman" convention of the western continues in Beauchamp's account of English Bob. Little Bill refutes this tale portraying Bob as a craven cad with a need for violence and a limited aptitude for it. He tells Beauchamp a version of the story and relates what he feels makes a western hero—coolness of head and accuracy and not necessarily speed. While Little Bill leaves room for variation in his story, Munny, in the killing of Bill and his deputies, breaks down the conventions that Bill has laid out. That Munny is fast allows him to win the gunfight. Although he might be somewhat cool of head, Munny as is shown at the beginning of the film is not accurate, his greater speed and commanding presence (no doubt somewhat achieved by the strength of Ned's stories about him to the sheriff and deputies) are what allow Munny to triumph in the end.

That Munny faces Little Bill and his deputies alone is not unusual in the western. Warshow says the Westerner is "lonely and to some degree melancholy." However, he goes on to say that the Westerner's "loneliness is organic, not imposed on him by his situation but belonging to him intimately and testifying to his completeness" (454). Yet, in the film, Munny is not "organically" alone. He begins the film with two partners, and to some degree they leave him because of narrative developments in the film; both Ned and the Kid reject the gunfighter lifestyle. In a way, however, Munny ends up alone because that it what the genre demands, a lone hero, and Unforgiven is a film that is very aware of the generic conventions of the western and is about the concept of generic convention.

In the film, the characters create identities and conventions of the gunfighting lifestyle for themselves. Both English Bob and Little Bill give Beauchamp narratives and rules of the gunfighting life that conform to their own views of the world and themselves. The Kid gives himself a name and a past history that to him reflects the lifestyle he wants for himself, which is a lifestyle he has come to know merely through the stories that he has heard. When confronted with the actuality (in the film) of gun violence, he repudiates that lifestyle. Munny's refusal to codify himself and his actions run contrary to the established pattern of the film. Thus, the film rejects the attempt to establish its own codes and calls into question previous generic conventions, possibly reflecting the generic awareness and self-reflexivity of the revisionist stage of generic development or Henri Focillon's "mannerist" stage. However, the film's ultimate posture is the rejection of genre itself.