Why do the Redlegs let Josie live at the beginning of the film?

I don't know what film you watched. The Outlaw Josey Wales is considered one of the greatest westerns ever. Most would disagree with you about the action sequences in the film being sloppy; they are set up the way they are to steep Josey's character in myth, and to say Eastwood is is overrated as a director is absurd.

Concerning the "lying in the saloon" scene; In my mind, the fact that they were obviously lying about Wales' fate was germaine to the gist of it all--they were lying, the Rangers and (obviously) Fletcher KNEW they were lying, but they just didn't give a s**t any more. They were just as happy to let the whole sordid mess drop and go home. Ten Spot told the lie, swore to it on a piece of paper, and that allowed them to say, "Case closed, let's get the hell out of this Godforsaken place!". One of the Rangers even reinforces the idea when he responds to the bartender's offer to "stop in if you're ever down this way again" with (and I'm paraphrasing) "Nope, I don't think that we'll EVER be down this way again", followed by an almost sarcastic, "Nice to see you, Mr. Wilson", as if to say, "Yeah, we know who you are, we know you're alive, but guess what? We don't care, and we really don't see why anyone else should, either". As Fletcher told him straight up a few seconds later, "The war is over".

I'll back up that Eastwood is great director by pointing out he has won four Oscars, five if you include his lifetime achievement award, and been nominated for many more. Moreover, he has over a hundred other industry awards to his credit for directing. You are stating your opinion about the film, not the facts. Like I said, most would disagree with your comments and this film has been honoured by the Library of Congress and preserved in the archives of the National Film Registry, an honour bestowed upon films that are deemed to be of high cultural and historical importance. There is a difference between not liking a film or actor/director and something that is of poor quality, you need to realize this.

Have to say, I like him, but I actually agree that he's overrated, but more with regard to his ability as a director to hire screenwriters and/or alter scripts. His films always seem to me to have lots of things about the writing that just don't make sense, things people wouldn't really say or wouldn't really do. There's a ton of that in this film, which I actually like overall, but I do think to like it you have to overlook a lot and/or look at much of the material as sort of "mythical," which I think is too often an excuse for just plain poor writing and story conception.

One minor example from OJW: He walks into the "Hoosier's" store, the proprietor starts rambling about all the Red Legs in town and other soldiers, etc. Then he suddenly says, out of nowhere, "Josey Wales!" Wales looks at him and says, "What?" Proprietor says something like, "Yeah, they say he's comin' this way, etc."

So the problem is this: Under what conceivable circumstances would a guy like that just speak a name into the air with no context? "Josey Wales!", he says, but only because it's needed for a little startle value -- like, "Oh, he recognizes him! No, wait, no he doesn't." But nobody would actually say that.

Now, this is not unheard of, as a movie convention. But it's still artificial, and there's a LOT of that in Eastwood movies. A lot of characters saying things that people like them would never say, just because the movie needs them to say it. Occasionally you see plot devices that fit into the same category, but there's far less of that than there is with the dialogue, IMHO.

I also enjoyed the final sequence of lies in the bar, but was confused how the two rangers didn't realise that was Josey. His appearance is quite obvious and he'd developed a name for himself.

http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=7917401/ - Vote History

The problem with your arguments, Gangsteroctopus, is that they are irrelevant to the conventions of this particular work of art. You might as well condemn a piece of cheese for not being an orange.

For example, the heroic victory against insuperable odds is a well-established literary and dramatic convention: read 'The Illiad' to witness Achilles scything through 100 and more Trojans in one fell swoop, or - more pertinently - watch 'Yojimbo' or 'The Hidden Fortress'. Standards of social realism are, very simply, the wrong ones to apply to this film. We are looking at super-natural heroism, not realistic gunfights.

As to the question of the bar people "obviously" lying - of course they are, that is the point. Fletcher of course knows they are, and the Texan rangers are subtly portrayed as being so sick of the whole business of chasing down renegades ("there are another ten thousand to follow") that they are happy to write this particular hunt off, on any feeble justification. The obviousness is the whole point. People, on the whole, are not very good at lying, either. That too rings true.

Really, to judge this admirable Western by the standards of hyper-social-realism is grossly inappropriate, and does the film no service whatsoever.

The redlegs wanted to spread fear and terror.
IF one person gets left alive it demoralises the southern cause. Or so they though.
Luckily for us, it made Josey into a stone cold killer.