Clint Eastwood made a career playing the Western protagonist. For decades he was charged with clearing out rustlers and outlaws, finding buried gold, and negotiating between rival gangs and families in sandy one-horse towns. In playing these parts, Eastwood helped define the tropes and stories of the genre. Then, in 1992, he took the same genre keystones he helped define and turned them on their head when he directed and starred in Unforgiven, a deconstruction of the modern western that explores the ethics and utility of violence, not only in the Western genre, but in Western culture.