What is Your Favorite Part of the Movie?

I liked that scene a lot. How Jamie helps Josey by pretending he is delirious and says he has gold under his blanket.

Then of course Josey's reply to Jamie's asking if they were gonna bury them. "buzzards gotta eat, same as worms."

An interesting side note to this scene, which I am sure most Josey Wales fans are aware of. Abe is played by Len Lesser, who later went on to play Jerry Seinfeld's Uncle Leo on the Seinfeld TV series. Len also had a role in at least one other Clint movie, Kelly's Heroes, a few years earlier, as Sgt Bellamy.

That scene with Granny is funny; her role is often criticized or some people for whatever don't like that she ends up joining Wales on the journey, when in fact she has some funny lines and an important part to play in the film.

Yeah, the trading post scene, starting with the door banging open like that and him standing in the door---what an imposing figure! And I can never get out of my mind the speed with which he spins his backwards guns around and shoots the bad guys.
I also love the whole "Well, are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle 'Dixie?'" sequence, including Lone Watie asking about the guy on the right and Josey saying, "I never paid him no mind. You were there." Humorous, but also says a lot about how he'd come to respect and trust his new friend in a short time. He knew Watie had his back.

Plus all the touching scenes and dialouge previously mentioned. :)




If you love Jesus Christ and are 100% proud of it copy this and make your signature!

As great as this film is, the one criticism I am left with time after time viewing it concerns the pacing of the final encounter between Wales and Terrill. Sometimes I think it is purposely anticlimactic, as it is that, and may have been intended to be so. The point is that while the impetus behind the search for Wales has ended, the film does not play to any sense of catharsis despite Wales's victory over his hated antagonist.

Although we know Fletcher himself is still out there, the later encounter with him and Wales is tense up to a point, but the way it ends is really true to where the story is at that point, and is not only plausible but utterly convincinb.

Which leads me to my favorite part, which is not only the ending with the dialogue between Wales and Fletcher, which as Doug points out is awesome. But the very ending, as Wales rides off from Santa Rio, presumably back to the ranch. Dripping blood, the wound a physical reminder of what he's been through, with the suggestion he must make good on the words of his last encounter with Fletcher.

But it also recalls his conversation with Ten Bears, and the point they end up both agreeing on, that sometimes it is harder to live in peace than fight.

I like to think Wales rides off fully knowing the challenge before him. Perhaps he is tired enough, and even bored enough, of the fighting and of living wondering when, not if, his antagonists would show up. Perhaps, and that will help.

But he also knows his life will be different, and that he must change his way of being going forward. The ending I think subtly alludes to that existential reality. In a sense he has come full circle to the life he had when the film opened (even if the people around him are different). Will it be difficult to do so? Is he ready for it? Were the words he shared with both Ten Bears and Fletcher what he not only felt at the time but will be prepared to live his life guided by those thoughts?

Aside from raising all these awesome thoughts and feelings, the end is perfect in tying up the main themes of the film and bringing its narrative arc to a conclusion. We may not literally know how Wales will go forward with his life, but we know what will be facing him. And that makes it a great ending, and my favorite scene in the film.