"The Outlaw Josie Wales" was made by Clint Eastwood at a time when westerns were out of favor and the public wanted more of Clint as Dirty Harry. This film as it turned out, was one of Clint's best and certainly ranks up there with the more popular "Unforgiven" (1992).

Josie Wales (Eastwood) is a dirt farmer in Missouri during the American Civil War. One day a group of yankee raiders led by Captain "Red Legs" Terrill (Bill McKinny) attacks and burns his farm and murders his wife and young son while leaving Josie for dead. As Josie ponders what to do next a group of southern raiders led by "Bloody Bill" Anderson (John Russell) takes him into his gang to seek his revenge.

After the South surrenders, a fellow southerner, Fletcher (John Vernon) offers the remaining members of Anderson's gang amnesty if they will swear allegiance to the North. All but Wales agree. Unbeknownst to Fletcher, the men are suddenly murdered by the Union soldiers led by Terrill and in spite of Josie's efforts, only he and a young soldier names Jamie (Sam Bottoms) escape. Terrill and Fletcher are sent to hunt down the fugitives.

Jamie soon dies from his wounds and Josie is left alone. He makes for Mexico but is joined first by Lone Watie (Chief Dan George), then Little Moonlight (Geraldine Kearns) whom Josie rescues from a trading post and finally Laura Lee (Sondra Locke) and Grandma Sarah (Paula Trueman) who he rescues from a gang of Commancheros.

The group makes for Texas where Grandma Sarah's son has left her a ranch. All the time Josie is being pursued by Terrill and assorted bounty hunters. Josie dispatches several of them with his brace of Colt 45 horse pistols.

Finally at the ranch, the group sets up a home and Josie begins to fall for Laura Lee. Fearing an Indian attack, Josie rides to meet with Chief Ten Bears (Will Sampson) and makes peace with him. But finally Terrill and his group of "Red Legs" tracks Josie down and..........

Eastwood who also directed the movie, plays Wales with his usual grim faced persons. He's not afraid to pull his pistols and dispose of anyone who stands in his way. Interestingly enough, Eastwood cast all of the principal Native roles with native actors and treated them as equals and not in the old Hollywood tradition.

An excellent western in every way.

If I had a favorite among Clint Eastwood westerns it's a tie between Joe Kidd and The Outlaw Josey Wales. If I was planning a personal Clint Eastwood festivals, these two would be my western choices.

Clint's a bitter man in this film and how he became The Outlaw Josey Wales is part of the story here. He's like John Wayne's Ethan Edwards from The Searchers, he doesn't believe in surrendering. Not after Union irregular Redlegs murdered his family and burned his farm to the ground. Before the first shot was fired on Fort Sumter, the war was being fought by irregular partisans for several years in Missouri. It was a key border state and both the Union and the Confederacy made claims to its loyalty.

When one of Clint's fellow raiders, John Vernon, sells out the band after Appomatox, Clint and a wounded Sam Bottoms escape and travel south. Bottoms eventually dies of his wound, but Eastwood keeps both finding fellow vagabonds to travel with. He also keeps running into people who want to collect that large bounty on his head that keeps growing after Clint deals with them in the usual Eastwood manner.

The relationship between Eastwood and Bottoms is very interesting. It's like the one with Clint and Jeff Bridges in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot without the sexual overtones. Bottoms gives an extremely touching performance, he was my favorite in the film.

Before Clint knows it he's collected himself quite a motley crew of wanderers who coalesce and form a community. And like it or not, he's become the focal point of that community, almost the way James Stewart did for the folks of Bedford Falls in It's A Wonderful Life.

Chief Dan George becomes part of the group, a full blooded Cherokee who fought on the Confederate side. Most of the Indian nations did just that, those who were settled in the Indian territory which later became Oklahoma. Eastwood had a very good eye for historical accuracy.

In fact that eye served him well as the director of The Outlaw Josey Wales as well. The whole tone of The Outlaw Josey Wales reflects in the cinematography and the performances of the players. Clint did a great job in capturing the mood and feel of the devastation of the South after the Civil War. Gone With The Wind did that, but that dealt with the planter class whereas The Outlaw Josey Wales deals with people who never owned any slaves, couldn't have afforded them if they wanted to own them. It's part of what makes the film so poignant in its way, much more so than Clint Eastwood's films normally are.

In a decade which certainly saw fewer and fewer westerns being made, The Outlaw Josey Wales is one of the two or three best to come out of the Seventies. It's definitely in the top ten of Clint Eastwood's best films.

I was disappointed by this film, as this was the last Western Eastwood has made that I had not seen. Given how wonderful most all these previous films were, I had extremely high expectations for the film. Had I never seen one of his Westerns before, I might have appreciated this film more,...but I knew they could be so much better.

The first half or so of the movie was the slowest moving and uninteresting. It mostly just consisted of Clint trying avoid capture by bounty hunters and Union soldiers after the war ended. This didn't seem particularly inspiring or interesting. However, it did pick up when the incredibly odd character played by Chief Dan George entered the movie. While this character was ridiculous and pretty anachronistic, he was so funny and weird that I really found myself ignoring how ridiculous the character was and was thrilled to see him breathe life into the film.

In addition to George, the story itself improved drastically when Eastwood no longer just ran from the law and killed bounty hunters but actually found some settlers to care about and care for. Their plight gave the movie some much needed tension and humanity. The only negative about this section of the film is when Sandra Locke is nearly raped by a band of Comancheros. The rape scene and subsequent nudity should have earned the film an R rating, but oddly despite all this it received a PG. This is really odd, as UNFORGIVEN was rated R, yet is much less explicit than this film. All I know is that this is NOT a film for your kids, though without this brief scene the film would be fine for your teens.

Pluses were the characters introduced into the last half of the film (not just George), the excellent conclusion and the fact that the film does dare to be different. Minuses are the slow pacing and uninteresting first half of the film, the excessive need to show Eastwood spitting tobacco juice EVERYWHERE again and again (yuck!), and the relative quality of the film compared to other Eastwood Westerns. The others are just so good, this one looks limp in comparison.