948. The Unforgiven (1960)

Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Burt Lancaster, Audie Murphy

Director: John Huston

Running Time: 125 mins

The Unforgiven is an American film about a wealthy and respected family in the Old West whose neighbours suddenly turn on them when it is revealed that their adopted daughter may have been stolen from the local tribe.

Quite simply, this is a very dull film. It’s meant to be full of heavy drama, as it looks at the problems of racism, deals with some weird incestuous themes, however none of them shine through due to a central romance that fails to convince in any way, shape or form, as well as a painfully slow pace that makes for very boring watching.

One of the major disappointments of this film is that it fails to make use of its fantastic cast. With Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn at the helm, this should be a runaway hit, however it’s actually not so good because those two, despite giving it their all, were pretty miscast in their roles Burt Lancaster doesn’t show as much of a tough guy in a role that’s dependent on a weird romance, whilst Audrey Hepburn has very little to do, acting more as eye candy similar to her role in Green Mansions than actually being able to put in the good performance that she can do.

As well as that, the story here is painfully weak. It tries hard to be a hard-hitting drama that deals with racism, something that was pretty uncommon in films in the 1960s, however that more serious side to the story just doesn’t come through due to the fact that you just don’t care enough about or believe in any of the characters.

The story of the sort of-not really incestuous romance here is more strange than in any way dramatic, and the rest of the action and western drama that unfolds throughout is pretty uninteresting, due to the fact that, with little care for any of the characters, due to their lack of real emotion and cartoonish personalities, nothing seems so exciting or tense as the film attempts to be.

Overall, this gets a 5.8, because despite having an all-star cast at the centre, this film fails to interest you in any way, making for a slow, drawn-out and dull watch that is nowhere near as dramatic as it intends to be.