Revisiting Revenge

I recently re-watched a couple of great revenge films from the 90s. The first was The Limey (1999) directed by Steven Soderbergh and the second was Unforgiven (1992) by Clint Eastwood. I was inspired to get the DVD of The Limey because it was said to have an interesting DVD commentary and it was; Soderbergh defends his choices for the film with the screenwriter Lem Dobbs second-guessing him. I was struck by the experimental fragmentation of the story and dialogue that took place and made it sort of arty-instead of a standard revenge thriller-I didn’t remember that about the film. Terrance Stamp is great as “the limey” on a mission. Also, it has a great soundtrack and lots of Luis Guzman-always a good thing.  I wanted to see Unforgiven again because a Japanese colleague of mine said he was writing a paper about it. I couldn’t remember the story well, but the strongest impressions I had was that it was a revisionist western and that Gene Hackman was really good as the cruel sheriff. The revenge sequence happens very late in the film near the end, but there was plenty of entertainment in Eastwood’s conversations with Morgan Freeman and the kid. I was reading about it and saw that Hackman beat out Pacino in Glengarry Glenn Ross for Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but Pacino got one for his “Hoo-ha-ing” in Scent of A Woman the next year.