Like other Revisionist Westerns, Unforgiven is primarily concerned with deconstructing the morally black-and-white vision of the American West which was established by traditional works in the genre, as the script is saturated with unnerving reminders of the now teetotal Munny's own horrific past as a drunken murderer and gunfighter who is haunted by the lives he's taken,[16] while the film as a whole "reflects a reverse image of classical Western tropes": the protagonists, rather than avenging a God-fearing innocent, are hired to collect a bounty offered by a group of prostitutes. Men who claim to be fearless killers are variously exposed as being either cowards, weaklings, or self-promoting liars, while others find that they no longer have it in them to take yet another life. A writer with no concept of the harshness and cruelty of frontier life publishes stories which glorify common criminals as infallible men of honor. The law is represented by a pitiless and cynical former gun-slinger whose idea of justice is often swift and without mercy, and while the main protagonist initially tries to resist his own violent impulses, the murder of his old friend drives him to become the same cold-blooded killer he once was, suggesting that a Western hero is not necessarily "the good guy", but is instead "just the one who survived".[17]
Film scholar Allen Redmon describes Munny's role as an anti-hero by stating he is "a virtuous or an injured hero [who] overcomes all obstacles to see that evil is eradicated, using whatever means necessary".[18]
