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Whistle Stopper - Outlaw Josey Wales
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List Price: $6.98
Our Price: $4.70
Your Save: $ 2.28 ( 33% )
Availability:
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Sam Bottoms, Matt Clark, Royal Dano, Chief Dan George, Joyce Jameson
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780790701851
Format: Closed-captioned
ISBN: 6306529136
Label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Release Date: 1992-05-27
Running Time: 136
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1976-06-30
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable night of action
Comment: The pace of the action is good. The dialogue has some humor and does not get in the way of the story telling or the scenes of gun fights. The story of betrayal and retribution is worth watching again and again. The gunning down of the redlegs (villians) by the outlaw Josey Wales (hero) will have you cheering for more. This is an enjoyable action film. Be sure to have hot, fresh popcorn available.
Customer Rating:
Summary: disintegration of Missouri
Comment: This film had every chance of being a great movie but lost its course somewhere along the way. The movie, especially the last half of the movie, should have been tightened up plenty. Because it wasn't, the movie is too long.
The first part of film is excellent. Clint Eastwood, as the poor farmer, Josie Wales, is attacked by the Yankee Red Legs who have swept in from Missouri. He is sabered, his child killed and his wife raped and murdered. The grief-ridden Wales, buries his family, recovers his revolver from the burned-out wreckage of his home, and starts to practice. At his low point, he is visited by Confederate guerillas under the famous "Bloody Bill Anderson", a man who has also lost his entire family to the Yankees.
Wales is happy to join up and fights in multiple battles against the hated Federals. As we know, however, the southern fighters are eventually driven to their knees. Wales' small group is one of the last to consider surrender. Most--but not the vengeful Wales--decide to accept Federal amnesty. It is a mistake. They are mowed down by the deceitful Union troops.
With a Yankee company hot on his heels he retreats towards Texas, taking revenge on Federal troops every time he can. By this time, of course, Wales has become one of the best and those who stand against him, die. He meets an old Cherokee man, Lone Watie, who himself hates the Federal Government. Together, they make an dangerous pair. Wales rescues a Navajo woman from the hands of criminals. She becomes a devoted, if somewhat unlikely member, of Wales new anti-Yankee band.
The movie probably should have ended here with some kind of terrific climax--maybe Wales and his two comrades fighting their enemies in some kind of last-ditch stand.
Unfortunately the movie doesn't end here. Eastwood's old girlfriend and nemesis, Sandra Locke [along with her miscast mother] are introduced. They are rebel-hating Yankees and, therefore, present the opportunity for redemption for both Wales and the women. Artistically, it just doesn't work. It's almost like Eastwood added an extra hour to his film just to make room for his girlfriend. It might not be what happened but that's what it looks like. Really a terrible shame.
By the way, the old Cherokee, Lone Watie, is taken from an actual historical character. Most members of the "Seven Civilized Tribes" of the Cherokee supported the Confederacy and many fought and died for the South. Chief Stand Watie was the last Confederate general to surrender, not surrendering until 1866.
People who think that Southern Secession and the Civil War were primarily about slavery must consider several things brought out by this film. First, Missouri had relatively few slaves and slave-owning families fought for both the Union and Confederacy. Nevertheless, Missori was one of the most violence-torn states during the War. People fought--no quarter--against people they opposed politically, culturally and personally. Finally, as we see with Wales, the violence became self-perpetuating. Enough people had been injured that they fought desperaely for motives of pure revenge.
Also, why is it that the vast majority of Native Americans who fought, side with the Confederacy? Few, indeed, were slaveholders. In my opinion, these American natives simply felt more sympatico with the laid-back, hunting, fishing Southerners.
Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A true gun-slinger
Comment: My husband loves this movie, and so does my 3-year-old son who loves to pretend to be a cowboy and shoot guns. But it's not for me. :)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Greatest Western of All Time!
Comment: The Outlaw Josey Wales is considered by some to be the greatest western. I agree.
A great western should have a collection of strong key elements, and Josey Wales has them all. The setting is the savage Civil War in Missouri and Kansas where atrocities and outrages were perpetrated by irregulars of both sides. Folks at the time called these criminals and guerrillas "bushwackers". The fighting in this theater of the Civil War is not commonly known and was particularly ugly and violent. Most actions were small unit affairs, with people who were well known to one another before the war fighting under opposing flags. Violence and crimes against civilians was common as both legitimate armies used irregulars to terrorize the civilian population. The massacre at Centralia, Missouri, September 27, 1864 was perpetrated by Bloody Bill Anderson and his men. There is no mention of this event in the film, of course, as there could be no sympathy for anyone who had had a part in that abomination.
Josey Wales captures the ugliness and horror of those times and provides a motivator to the title character when his family is murdered by Kansas Union irregulars. Wales is enraged and joins Bloody Bill Anderson's Confederate guerrilla outfit. When the War ends, they are one of the last organized Confederate units to surrender (at least according to the film). Wales' comrades surrender themselves at a Union camp, but Josey refuses. But everything is not as it seems and as the men surrender their arms and take the Oath of Allegiance to the Union, they are viciously murdered in cold blood. It turns out that the same unit that has just killed his fellow Confederates is the very same that had killed his family several years before. And so the chase begins... Wales is now the "Outlaw Josey Wales" running from bounty hunters and every male in the territory with a gun not to mention the Union army.
Josey Wales is played by Clint Eastwood in one his best performances. The character is very much like the "Man with no name" from his Spaghetti Western days. Closer to "Blondie" in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly than the silent gunslinger of "Pale Rider", Wales is essentially a good man driven to revenge and violence by circumstances. He is the everyman of the Civil War dragged into the maelstrom of events. As he runs from his pursuers he picks up a ragtag crew of fascinating characters who ride with him, eventually heading for southern Texas. Along the way there are gunfights, suspense, and lots of action.
A great western should have certain components including:
* beautiful desert scenery
* a good story line
* small ramshackle frontier towns
* a hero or anti-hero with strong and understandable motivations
* guns, ideally pistols
* cool hats
* indians
* lots of horses
* rotten villains
Outlaw Josey Wales was directed by Eastwood, too. Sandra Locke, Chief Dan George, and John Vernon co-star.
Wales is an avenger as he rides across deserts and through broken down frontier towns. He has no options, but to find a place to hide, or just keep on riding forever. Every shooting that involve him is self-defense or in the defense of others who cannot defend themselves. He is a hero, an unsurrendered Confederate partisan, haunted by the senseless murder of his family.
Josey Wales has beautiful scenery, lots of horses and pistols, rotten villains who deserve to get shot (and generally do), suffering innocents who need protection, and one of the coolest hats in American cinema history.
Josey Wales' hat is stained with sweat, it's a deep Confederate Gray with a wide and slightly upturned brim. Eastwood hides his eyes under the brim of this hat, and when he slightly lifts his head to look at someone - they know quickly that Wales is not a man to be trifled with. He has a sense of honor and obligation to others, but has no compunction in shooting those who are hunting him or are fixin' to hurt his friends.
There is a touching moment after Eastwood and his friends have arrived at their Texas destination. Sondra Locke, dressed in a fine white dress, talks about how beautiful the clouds look. She represents the stability, and happiness of his pre-war life and the look of sadness and dissociation that Eastwood delivers is a fine and sad one. After all of his war-fighting, his losses, and the personal toll that the War has taken, Josey Wales must try very hard to find a place for himself in a peaceful and stable post-war environment. Killing is easy now for him; it's living without violence that will be so challenging. One of the more powerful aspects of his character is that he so wants to try.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent movie
Comment: One of the best Old West movies Clint ever did. Can't really call it a cowboy movie, but great just the same.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Clint Eastwood fired the original director, Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff), and took over the reins of this project himself. He may have had a point: this brutal, thoughtful western, a near-tragedy about a Civil War veteran whose past comes looking for him, is probably Eastwood's most mature frontier drama prior to the Oscar winning Unforgiven. Hoping to build a quiet life in a cooperative community of settlers, Eastwood's Wales blames himself when his enemies attack the homestead, and he has to revert to his warrior instincts to help fend off the threat. The jittery intensity of Sondra Locke (who would be Mrs. Eastwood, at least for a while), and the screen-filling charisma of the late Chief Dan George harmonize beautifully with Eastwood, who had finally figured out how to add depth and texture to his stock-in-trade Man of Steel persona. This one may be too short on action to satisfy fans of Eastwood's Dirty Harry films, or of the Italian westerns he made with Sergio Leone, but it's an honorable effort. --David Chute
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