One of Clint Eastwood’s most accomplished westerns, based on a rather elaborate script by David Webb Peoples (who cowrote Blade Runner). Like Bird, this 1992 film seems at times to equate dark cinematography with artistry (albeit with stunning locations in Canada and California and beautifully composed results), and as with White Hunter, Black Heart its view of reality depends almost entirely on countercliches and their implied critique of the machismo of earlier Eastwood movies. Consequently, there’s not much dramatic urgency apart from the revisionist context. Eastwood plays a reformed alcoholic killer, now a widower, father, and failing hog farmer in Kansas, who’s lured into a bounty hunt by a brash kid (Jaimz Woolvett) and persuades an old partner (Morgan Freeman) to join them. With Frances Fisher, Anna Thomson, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris, and Saul Rubinek. R, 127 min. (JR)