In June of 1992, I attended a sneak preview of Batman Returns that was preceded by trailers for three upcoming Warner releases: One Hot Summer (later retitled That Night), Stay Tuned, and Unforgiven. Of this trio of coming-soons--the first featuring Juliette Lewis in her Skivvies all but French-kissing an oscillating fan, the second John Ritter and Pam Dawber getting sucked into the netherworld of their new satellite dish, and the third Clint Eastwood vowing to settle a score in the Old West--it was Unforgiven's that earned scores of derisive laughter from the fanboy crowd. I'm telling you, they almost rioted.

Understand that Eastwood was irrelevant at this point (there's no polite way to say it), having marginalized himself with the hat trick of The Dead Pool, Pink Cadillac, and The Rookie (the Charlie Sheen cop movie, not the Dennis Quaid baseball flick). Unforgiven looked like an act of belligerence on Eastwood's part. If Unforgiven taught us anything (taught me anything), it's that predicting when a filmmaker's going to hit one out of the park is hopeless. Perhaps we should already have learned our lesson from Robert Altman's The Player earlier that year, but there was something so unpromising about another Eastwood western--what was Eastwood's penultimate oater (1985's Pale Rider) but two hours of misplaced homesickness for the genre?

Unforgiven's opening shot is significant: a burial in silhouette. The film has a ceremonial quality in that it lays the past to rest--sans redemption, as the title cruelly implies. Every monologue of Eastwood's William Munny character, a desperado "cured of drinkin' and...wickedness" by his late wife, is an epitaph for the nihilism displayed in films he made under the direction of Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, to both of whom Unforgiven is dedicated. Aspects of this introductory image--a gnarly tree, an ominous sunset--are noteworthy, too, for they reflect the fantastical approach of Unforgiven's screenwriter David Webb Peoples, whose prior claim to fame was rewriting Blade Runner and whose subsequent credits include the sci-fi entries 12 Monkeys and Soldier. Ironically, these expressionistic elements are not in place in the prologue of Unforgiven on the page--Eastwood's most fecund period behind the camera (1992-1995, ending with The Bridges of Madison County) is indicated by auteurial serendipity.

Falling in the middle of that glorious three-film phase is 1993's A Perfect World, scripted by John Lee Hancock, the Texas talent who recently transferred to the director's chair with The Rookie--the Quaid version. While neither as cohesive nor as profound as Unforgiven, A Perfect World feels similarly elegiac, also contemplates the eruption of violence in an idyllic setting, and is if anything the more emotional and less merciful of the two. (Some may accuse the picture of sentimentality, but really it gets caught up in the moment.) A Perfect World, too, begins with enigmatic, overwrought visuals (reproduced below): Kevin Costner lying in a verdant field, looking fatigued. To his right, a Casper the Friendly Ghost mask. Above him whap the blades of a helicopter, the wind they produce scattering dollar bills across his chest. The combination of the chopper and tall green grass would appear to evoke Vietnam by design: the film takes place on the eve of JFK's assassination in 1963, in that world before the national cherry was popped--which, Eastwood and Hancock decide, wasn't such a perfect one after all.

Unforgiven and A Perfect World are two of the best movies of the nineties, though each seems out of step with its larger cinematic and societal context, the Miramax/Clinton era. Although the former found Oscar glory, the latter tanked domestically, despite stars Costner and Eastwood coming to it fresh from hits (The Bodyguard and In the Line of Fire, respectively). And that's why Unforgiven and A Perfect World resonate a decade or so later, because they tackle timeless rather than vogue subject matter. (Unforgiven: the regret that accompanies aging; A Perfect World: absentee fathers (a theme of Hancock's resumed in The Rookie). Not to be reductive.) Though there was the potential with A Perfect World to put "Dirty" Harry Callahan out to dignified pasture (the volatile fugitive played wonderfully by Costner is the residue of cowboy cop Garnett's (Eastwood) intolerant sense of justice), part of the film's merit is that it doesn't confuse agendas--Eastwood's out to haunt us when the minutes drag (to say he succeeds is an understatement), and so Haynes' temporary adoption of seven-year-old Philip (TJ Lowther) stays front and centre. A pair of swan songs might have been a bit much, anyway.

At last granted the DVD treatment it deserves, Unforgiven arrives in a Two-Disc Special Edition from Warner that presents the film in a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer of immense beauty. The print used for this master was pristine and dark areas of the video are articulate; the colour has a lot of muscle to it. A Dolby Digital 5.1 remix achieves convincing atmosphere without adding undue testosterone to the various gun blasts. Dialogue is clear and stentorian. Disc One features not only the movie, but also an interesting screen-specific commentary track from self-proclaimed Eastwood historian Richard Schickel (of TIME MAGAZINE) wherein he relates secondhand on-set anecdotes (in addition to providing a thorough consideration of Munny's actions), cast & crew filmographies, a list of the many awards that Unforgiven won during the '92-'93 season, text production notes filed under "Eastwood Out West," and Unforgiven's blurry theatrical trailer.

Disc Two contains: a new meditative documentary--hampered by an intrusive number of clips but legitimized by insightful interviews with Peoples, et al--called "All On Accounta Pullin' a Trigger" (20 mins.), which Morgan Freeman more or less hosts; "Eastwood & Co.: Making Unforgiven" (24 mins.), a 1992 featurette in which we discover that long dialogue scenes between men on horseback are staged with the actors standing on ladders, as their equine co-stars are far too impatient for that sort of thing; "Eastwood...A Star" (16 mins.), another making-of with a career retrospective slant; and Schickel's official retrospective Eastwood on Eastwood (68 mins.), an overrehearsed rundown of Eastwood's life in Hollywood and elsewhere narrated by John Cusack. The engaging episode of "Maverick" that guest-starred Eastwood, "Duel at Sundown" (49 mins.), rounds out the worthwhile package.

A Perfect World debuts on DVD in a disc that sure beats the LaserDisc I used to spin annually in terms of brilliance. The striking 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer spotlights cinematographer Jack N. Green's primary palette of blue and green with minimal edge-enhancement. Another 5.1 Dolby Digital remix again favours realism, refusing to indulge the subwoofer or split-surrounds unless critical, as in a campfire sequence that dedicates the rear channels to cricket noise. "Big Fran's Baby," the bagpiped, Eastwood-penned dirge that accompanies the film's unsettling climax, has never sounded as vital as it does here. (It's a haunting piece of music that, sadly, was re-recorded for the soundtrack album in an emasculated saxophone arrangement.) Cast & crew bios and A Perfect World's theatrical trailer cap this unfortunately sparse DVD.-Bill Chambers