“The Outlaw Josey Wales”

Movie Review

Clint Eastwood directed and starred as Josie Wells, in “The Outlaw Josey Wales” released in 1976 is an American revisionist Western film set during and after the American Civil War. Dan George, Sondra Locke, Sam Bottoms and Geraldine Keams were also starred with Eastwood. The film tells the story of Josie Wells, a Missouri farmer who was killed by Union soldiers during the Civil War. Seeking revenge, Wales joins a Confederate guerrilla band and makes a name for himself as a fearsome gunfighter. After the battle, all the soldiers in Wales's group except him surrender to Union officers, but are massacred. Wells is an outlaw, pursued by bounty hunters and Union soldiers as he tries to make a new life for himself.

Josey Wales, a Missouri farmer, is driven to revenge by the murder of his wife and young son by a band of Redlegs, a unit of pro-Union Jayhawker militants from Senator James H. Lane’s Kansas Brigade, led by the brutal Captain Terrill.

After grieving and burying his wife and son, Wales took part in attacks on Union sympathizers and military units. He practices shooting before joining a group of pro-Confederate Missouri bushwhackers led by Anderson. At the end of the war, Josey's friend and superior, Captain Fletcher, persuades the guerrillas to surrender, and Senator Lane offers them amnesty if they surrender their weapons. Wales refuses to surrender, and as a result, he and a young guerrilla named Jamie are the only survivors as Terrill's Redlegs slaughter the surrenderers. Wales intervenes and wipes out several Redlegs with a Gatling gun, escaping with Jamie, who is shot to death after helping Josie kill two bounty hunters.

Lane forces a reluctant Fletcher to help Terrill find his friend, attracting the attention of Union soldiers and bounty hunters who want to hunt him down with a $5,000 bounty on his head. Along the way, despite his aversion to traveling with company, Wales collects a variety of companions. Among them was Lon Watie, an old Cherokee man; Little Moonlight, a young Navajo girl; Sarah Turner, an old woman from Kansas; and his granddaughter Laura Lee, whom Wales and Little Moonlight rescue from a group of marauding Comancheros. Josey and Laura later sleep together, as do Lone Watie and Little Moonlight. In the town of Santo Rio, the group is joined by Travis and Chato, who work for Sarah Turner's dead son Tom.

Wales and his companions find an abandoned farm once owned by Tom and settle there. Travis and Chato were soon captured by Dan Pierce, a feared Comanche chieftain. Wales enters the Ten Bears' camp, negotiates peace with him, and the Ten Bears make a blood oath to live in peace. Wales rescues Travis and Chato and brings them back to the ranch.

Meanwhile, a bounty hunter shot by Wales in Santo Rio leads Captain Terrill and his men to the city. The next morning, the Redlegs make a surprise attack on the farm. Wells' men fire from the fortified farmhouse, and Terrill's men shoot them all down. Wounded and out of bullets, Wales follows the fleeing Terrill back to Santa Rio. As he surrounded him, Wales fired his four pistols through every empty chambers before sealing them. As Terrill draws up his cavalry, Wales grabs his arm and, after a slow struggle, plunges a knife into Terrill's chest, finally avenging his family.

Back at the Santa Rio saloon, Wells, along with two Texas Rangers, finds the locals telling Fletcher how an outlaw named Josey Wells had recently been killed by five pistoleros in Monterey. The Rangers accept the story with a signed affidavit and move on, while Fletcher says nothing about Wales and pretends not to recognize him. After the Rangers ride off, Fletcher says he will go to Mexico to find Wales himself and try to tell him the war is over. Wales says, "I think so. I guess we all died a little in that damn war", before riding off.

The film was adapted by Sonia Chernus and Philip Kaufman from the novel The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales by author Asa Earl "Forrest" Carter. In 1996, the film was selected by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Michael Parks played Josey Wales in the 1986 film The Return of Josey Wales.

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