TIME has been good to Clint Eastwood. If possible, he looks even taller, leaner and more mysteriously possessed than he did in Sergio Leone's seminal "Fistful of Dollars" a quarter of a century ago. The years haven't softened him. They have given him the presence of some fierce force of nature, which may be why the landscapes of the mythic, late 19th-century West become him, never more so than in his new "Unforgiven."

As written by David Webb Peoples and directed by Mr. Eastwood, "Unforgiven" is a most entertaining western that pays homage to the great tradition of movie westerns while surreptitiously expressing a certain amount of skepticism. Mr. Eastwood has learned a lot from his mentors, including the great Don Siegel ("Two Mules for Sister Sara" and "The Beguiled," among others), a director with no patience for sentimentality.

The time is the 1880's. The principal setting is Big Whiskey, a forlorn hamlet in that vast American no-man's land of high plains edged by mountains, somewhere between St. Louis and San Francisco but not on any map.

Late one night a couple of cowboys are on the second floor of the saloon with the girls. Suddenly one of the cowboys whips out his knife and slashes the face of Delilah, the prostitute he's with. It seems that she made a rude comment about his anatomy. Instead of arresting the cowboys, Little Bill Daggett, the sheriff, allows them to get off with the understanding that they hand over six horses to the saloon keeper.

Strawberry Alice, the victim's best friend, is outraged. "We may be whores," she says, "but we aren't horses." Alice, Delilah and the other girls pool their savings and offer a bounty of $1,000 to anybody who will murder the cowboys.

Thus "Unforgiven" becomes an epic about the revenge of whores. It's not sending up the women. Rather it's equating Old Western codes of honor with the handful of men who set out to collect the bounty, motivated in varying degrees by economic necessity, greed and half-baked notions of glory.

Chief among the bounty hunters is the aging Bill Munny (Mr. Eastwood), a widower trying to support his two young children on an unsuccessful hog farm. Munny has been keeping to himself in recent years. He's still trying to live down his notorious career as a gun-crazy outlaw, a man who used to shoot women, children -- anybody -- just for the hell of it.

There is something creepy about him now, especially about the way he keeps harping on how his wife "saved" him, his distaste for violence and his need to be true to his pledge never to pick up a gun again. He has something of the manner of the mild-mannered clerk who comes into the office on Monday morning and shoots everyone in sight.

When a young fellow who styles himself the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) asks Munny to join him to win the bounty, Munny at first refuses. Then he changes his mind, apparently because he is desperately hard up, but with Munny you can't be sure. Along the way to Big Whiskey, they are joined by Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), who rode with Munny in the outlaw days and appears to trust him.

Also en route to Big Whiskey for the same purpose is English Bob (Richard Harris). He's a dandyish former outlaw who, when first seen, is aboard a train, reading about the assassination of President James A. Garfield and explaining to anyone who will listen why America would be better off with a king. His admiring companion is W. W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek), whom English Bob introduces as "my biographer," the author of a penny dreadful about the outlaw titled "The Duke of Death."

Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman) is ready for the bounty hunters as they arrive in Big Whiskey. He immediately spots English Bob as he gets off the stagecoach, gives him a sadistic beating and throws him in jail. Mr. Harris, who has a tendency to overpower his roles, has never been finer, funnier or more restrained than he is as English Bob, whom Daggett insists on calling "the Duck of Death."

Things turn far darker with the arrival of Munny, Ned and the Schofield Kid. Daggett suspects their purpose but is unable to prove anything. Just to let them know who runs Big Whiskey, Daggett beats up Munny as savagely as he has English Bob, but Munny appears to ask for it. Bleeding and only partly conscious, he crawls out of the saloon and into a muddy gutter.

It is a measure of how the film works that Munny's almost Christ-like acceptance of his beating is one of the film's scariest moments. There is a madness inside him waiting to emerge, but where and when? "Unforgiven," which has no relation to "The Unforgiven," the 1960 John Huston western, never quite fulfills the expectations it so carefully sets up. It doesn't exactly deny them, but the bloody confrontations that end the film appear to be purposely muted, more effective theoretically than dramatically.

This, I suspect, is a calculated risk. Mr. Eastwood doesn't play it safe as a director, but there are times in "Unforgiven," as in his jazz epic, "Bird," that the sheer scope of the narrative seems to overwhelm him. It's not easy cramming so much information into a comparatively limited amount of time. Toward the end of "Bird," he didn't seem to be telling the story of Charlie Parker as much as letting it unravel. That doesn't happen in "Unforgiven," but the tone, so self-assured to begin with, becomes loaded with qualifications.

The film looks great, full of broad chilly landscapes and skies that are sometimes as heavy with portents as those in something by El Greco. It's corny but it works.

Photographed by Jack N. Green, who was the camera operator for Bruce Surtees, Mr. Eastwood's cinematographer for "Pale Rider," "Unforgiven" favors the kind of backlighting that can add a sense of desolation and menace to even the most conventional moments. Seen against a bright background, faces turned to the camera are so hidden in shadow that they aren't immediately recognizable. It is a storyteller's gesture for the audience's benefit, since the other characters within the scene would not be so disadvantaged.

The cast is splendid, though some of the actors have more to do than others, including Mr. Freeman, whose role is not especially demanding. Mr. Hackman delights as Sheriff Daggett: no more Mr. Good Guy. Also worthy of particular note are Mr. Woolvett, who makes his feature film debut as the unreliable Schofield Kid; Mr. Rubinek as a city journalist out of his element out West, and Frances Fisher as Strawberry Alice, a woman who doesn't know when to shut up.

Yet the center of attention, from the moment he rises up out of a hog pen until the darkest fade-out in western movie history, is Mr. Eastwood. This is his richest, most satisfying performance since the underrated, politically lunatic "Heartbreak Ridge." There's no one like him.

"Unforgiven" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has a lot of violence, vulgar language and some sexual situations. Unforgiven Directed and produced by Clint Eastwood; written by David Webb Peoples; director of photography, Jack N. Green; edited by Joel Cox; music by Lennie Niehaus; production designer, Henry Bumstead; released by Warner Brothers. Running time: 130 minutes. This film is rated R. Bill Munny . . . Clint Eastwood Little Bill Daggett . . . Gene Hackman Ned Logan . . . Morgan Freeman English Bob . . . Richard Harris Schofield Kid . . . Jaimz Woolvett W. W. Beauchamp . . . Saul Rubinek Strawberry Alice . . . Frances Fisher Delilah Fitzgerald . . . Anna Thomson Quick Mike . . . David Mucci Davey Bunting . . . Rob Campbell Skinny Dubois . . . Anthony James Little Sue . . . Tara Dawn Frederick Silky . . . Beverley Elliott Faith . . . Liisa Repo-Martell Crow Creek Kate . . . Josie Smith Will Munny . . . Shane Meier Penny Munny . . . Aline Levasseur