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.

Clint Eastwood has turned in some great performances in some great movies, these include Unforgiven, Dirty Harry, and this film The Outlaw Josey Wales. Eastwood himself gives one of his finest performances here, and he is well served by a very talented cast who turn in equally impressive performances and also the film is superbly directed.

The film looks wonderful, the production values are very meticulous and the film is beautifully shot. Jerry Fielding's score compliments the film perfectly, and the dialogue and characters are all memorable.

I must also give credit to the story. The story here for me has very rare a dull moment and, from the shocking opening sequence to the ending that appeals to me every time I see this film, is swiftly told.

Overall, great and one of Eastwood's best. 10/10 Bethany Cox

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.