Out of anything in Clint Eastwood’s filmography, arguably his most accomplished and impressive display of acting and directing is documented in The Outlaw Josey Wales, a true revisionist Western before the Western genre was solely defined by its own deconstruction. Eastwood, playing a quiet, mysterious, and vengeful outlaw with a tragic arc, gives one of his most well-rounded performances. The film manages to satisfy all the thrills and adventurous flair of a classic Western, but it’s accompanied by a sorrowful reflection of the American Military-Industrial complex, and how it uses people on the periphery of society as vessels for war combat. Along with painting Native Americans in a nuanced and sympathetic light, The Outlaw Josey Wales hasn’t aged a day. Naturally, a film this immaculate is in no need of a sequel, but what if we told you that there was indeed a sequel to the Eastwood classic? Don’t worry, there’s a reason why you’ve never heard of it.
‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’ Shows Clint Eastwood’s Knack for Western Deconstruction
Clint Eastwood brought all his iconic traits: clenched jaw, hushed voice, and searing squinting, to The Outlaw Josey Wales. Donning similar iconography to the Man With No Name from the Sergio Leone Dollars Trilogy, Eastwood’s pistol-wielding and horseback-riding titular character defines the Old West. The film, based on the novel The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales, follows Eastwood’s titular Josey Wales, a Missouri farmer whose family is killed by a sadistic Union Army officer. During his journey, he joins a Confederate guerrilla unit also on the run from the Union army. As Wales approaches the Mexico border and helps protect a local Native American community, his reputation as a feared gunslinger becomes material for legend-making. With any Western, parsing through its problematic elements in the context of the big picture is a given. The original novel was written by Forrest Carter, who was revealed to be the pseudonym of Asa Earl Carter, a Ku Klux Klan organizer and speechwriter for pro-segregationist George Wallace.
The Outlaw Josey Wales valorized Clint Eastwood as a genuine auteur, capable of deploying his movie star likeness to comment on his image and foothold in the Western genre. The film earns its credentials as a revisionist Western due to its gritty, unflinching gun fights that verge on traditional war combat. Eastwood converges the archetypal Western with a man-on-a-mission war epic, with Wales fighting alongside rag-tag armies against a common enemy. Eastwood’s blistering direction of his battle sequences is juxtaposed with a somber meditation on the noble outlaw. Josey Wales shows Western ideals shattered amid the backdrop of war, as the character’s independence is compromised by the motivations of army platoons and tribes exploiting him for his adept gunfighting ability. “Sometimes trouble just follows a man,” Wales reckons before riding off to battle in a poignant statement that sees him accepting his inevitable fate as a harbinger of doom.
The Sequel-Shy Clint Eastwood Passed on Directing a Sequel to ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’
While Eastwood made his fair share of sequels, with Dirty Harry being his longest-running series, he doesn’t rely on a franchise enterprise to maintain popularity and build his brand. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, he perfected the “one for them, one for me” path, making the fifth and final Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool, and following that up with a passion project about the life of Charlie Parker in Bird. Still, Eastwood expressed interest in continuing the Josey Wales story, as he once considered adapting Asa Carter’s sequel to the original novel. This project never left the early development stages, and Eastwood moved on to more ambitious stories. However, the studio made a heedless decision to proceed with a Josey Wales sequel without the contribution of its lead star and director. When asked why Eastwood walked away from the sequel, Asa Carter said “I think Clint’s had all he can take ‘a me.”
The Return of Josey Wales, the sequel to the 1976 film and based on Carter’s novel, The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales, was released in 1986 with little fanfare. The film is a broad mirroring of its predecessor, with a retired Josey Wales, a family man believed to be dead after the events of the original, embarking on a journey to Mexico to avenge the death of his friends at the hands of a gang of supporters of the executed Mexican Emperor Maximilian. Replacing Eastwood’s shoes as star and director is Michael Parks, a prolific television actor of the ’60s and ’70s, prominently featured in Then Came Bronson. He was reclaimed by the indie darlings of the ’90s, including Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and Kevin Smith, appearing in minor roles in Kill Bill, From Dusk till Dawn, Grindhouse, and Tusk. Parks has been around the block as an entertainer, even having a background in singing, but directing was a one-time experiment, as The Return of Josey Wales is his lone directing credit.
‘The Return of Josey Wales’ Is a Cheap Cash Grab Without Much Life
On Rotten Tomatoes, no reviews of The Return of Josey Wales are posted, and there are fewer than 50 audience ratings, altogether suggesting that the film was some incomplete/unreleased project. It may seem like just a figment of one’s imagination, but a low-quality copy of the film is available on YouTube. Perhaps it’s more of an indictment of the print, but The Return of Josey Wales has the amateurish quality of a home movie and makes Clerks look like Avatar. The movie is evocative of a product of a studio scrambling to make a quick cash grab solely to retain the rights to the Josey Wales novel.
Where Eastwood’s film actively reinvents the Western formula and character archetypes, Parks’ film consists of run-of-the-mill Western tropes, presenting no differentiation between the basic dime paperback novel. The cheap production design and sound mixing make it nearly impossible to engage with the narrative, but even if the movie was technically pristine and formally sharp, there wouldn’t be much story to cling to. While Parks was a sturdy character actor for years, he lacks the dynamic movie star radiance of Eastwood. He may have had experience working on Western TV, but his performance lacks any depth that you want out of a complex and morally conflicted figure like Josey Wales.
The Outlaw Josey Wales ends on a perfect note, with the titular gunfighter solemnly remarking, “I guess we all died a little in that damned war,” before riding off into the sunset, uncertain of his fate. It is the right level of closure and ambiguity. Most importantly, it’s not an ending that calls for a sequel. Ultimately, one would be hard-pressed to suggest that The Return of Josey Wales stains the legacy of its predecessor, as it feels so cheap and nonexistent.