Clint Eastwood's best Western movies of all time, from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly to Unforgiven. While those films are his most acclaimed - for good reason - The Outlaw Josey Wales deserves more love among Clint Eastwood's impressive filmography, especially when it comes to Westerns.

In The Outlaw Josey Wales, Eastwood plays the titular Josey Wales, a former Confederate soldier who only ed the American Civil War to get revenge against the man who killed his family, Union Captain Terrill. It's certainly a Revisionist Western filled with shades of gray and moral ambiguity, but Josey Wales is one of the more nuanced takes on the Civil War, at least from the Western genre. It's an endlessly thoughtful and thought-provoking movie that became one of Eastwood's best movies in general, and it's also one of his best anti-war movies.

The Outlaw Josey Wales Is A Classic Clint Eastwood Western

The Outlaw Josey Wales Had Everything You'd Want Out Of An Eastwood Western

As thought-provoking as The Outlaw Josey Wales is, the movie is also still a great Western in the classic sense. There are plenty of gunfights, standoffs, and clever moments in the movie, such as when Josey sends the Union soldiers hunting him on a "Missouri boat ride." The entire movie is propped up by Clint Eastwood's performance as Josey, but there's also an incredibly deep cast that help challenge the viewers' preconceived notions of the post-Civil War era. The Outlaw Josey Wales is a lot of things, but it's certainly not boring.

The Outlaw Josey Wales also had some of Clint Eastwood's best quotes, such as the timeless "Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms." It's also one of his more visually iconic Westerns: I had a poster of Josey Wales holding his pistols taped to my wall for all four years of college, and that image of Eastwood screaming is still impressive today. The Outlaw Josey Wales is a very well-made and classic Western top to bottom, and it's probably one of Eastwood's best outings.

Clint Eastwood Himself ed The Movie's Anti-War Message

Eastwood Compared Josey Wales' Messages To The Iraq War In 2011

The Outlaw Josey Wales wasn't just a great Western, though, it was also a great anti-war movie. In 2011, Clint Eastwood himself praised the movie's message and the commentary it provided on war, the effects of it, and what warfare means to humankind (via The Wall Street Journal).

"As for Josey Wales, I saw the parallels to the modern day at that time. Everybody gets tired of it, but it never ends. A war is a horrible thing, but it's also a unifier of countries. . . . Man becomes his most creative during war. Look at the amount of weaponry that was made in four short years of World War II—the amount of ships and guns and tanks and inventions and planes and P-38s and P-51s, and just the urgency and the camaraderie, and the unifying. But that's kind of a sad statement on mankind, if that's what it takes."

Clint Eastwood had recently finished directing Letters from Iwo Jima when this interview took place, a movie which also took an anti-war approach to World War II. He was also interviewed during the tail end of the United States' war with Iraq following 9/11, and he evidently saw how the messages in The Outlaw Josey Wales could be applied to real life.

Eastwood is largely right about The Outlaw Josey Wales: the anti-war messaging in the movie is fairly evident. Josey Wales' entire story is about the hatred and atrocities that start wars, and how the people that fight in wars carry them with them long after the last shot rings out. The Outlaw Josey Wales' main villain, Captain Terrill, is a prime example of how war brings out cruelty in people, even those people who are on the more morally justified side. Even the final line of The Outlaw Josey Wales, "I guess we all died a little in that damned war," shows what Clint Eastwood thinks of war.