Is a man “good” if he is honorable, attentive, and dutiful? For a vague adjective – one that is routinely edited out of academic and non-creative writing for lack of rigor and specificity – good seems to evoke this sense of righteousness attributed to no single entity in particular. Its usage is biblical and universal. Its opposite is not necessarily bad, but rotten, pernicious, and the catch-all not-good. Many potential partners desire this trait in a mate. Mothers long for their sons and daughters to stay out of trouble, “up to no good,” they will call it.
What does it mean, then, to be a good man? If we call it an adjective of vaguery and looseness, then a good man is a man of any quality the beholder attributes to good. It could be honor, attention, and duty, but it could also be kindheartedness and honesty. Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men does not ask us to define good, which is, well, good, because the line is thin between good and evil. Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup toes the line as if there is no line. The audience, whose narrator is omnipotent, sees cover-up and deception, but Col. Jessup, the antagonist as written, sees duty and honor. Is fairness and justice for all more important than national security and unit cohesion, as Col. Jessup sees it? Is it good to value honor over life? Continue reading
Not much more can be said about Unforgiven; the film acts as a rightful tombstone for the death of a genre as non-homage, non-satire. Not much more can be said for director, writer, and actor Clint Eastwood, who, with the fresh-dirt Unforgiven brought to the Oscars in 1992, hyper-legitimized his place as both an actor and director almost 40 years into his career. Unforgiven is remarkable because of its simultaneous ultraviolent and restrained plot stems. Eastwood as Munny, a man with a character fog that neither lifts nor needs to, runs a cast of characters in circles as he cuts through both plot and character with such sharpness that as the last credit rolls across the screen, the audience is certain Eastwood is both the diameter and the circumference, and all points in and on the shape – “life.” Not much more can be said about Gene Hackman or Morgan Freeman or Richard Harris that has not already been said in essay or video format.
The Academy Nominees Project 