Westerns are one of the great bits of cinematic myth-making, with the genre solidifying the archetypical cowboy facing challenges in the rugged American West. With so many different takes on the genre since the dawn of the film medium, here are the 13 greatest Western movies of all time.
13 Greatest Western Movies of All Time
13. No Country for Old Men
Not all Westerns have to be set in the Wild West era of the 19th and early 20th century, with neo-Westerns bringing the familiar tropes to present-day. The Coen Brothers teamed up in 2007 to adapt Cormac McCarthy’s acclaimed novel No Country for Old Men into a movie of the same name. Easily one of the greatest movies in the Coen Brothers’ extensive career, No Country for Old Men went on to win a well-deserved Academy Award for Best Picture.
Set in 1980s West Texas, No Country for Old Men follows a man named Llewellyn (Josh Brolin) as he recovers millions of dollars from a drug deal gone horribly wrong. In response, the cartel hires relentless assassin Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) to retrieve the money and kill anyone who comes into contact with it. A star-making performance from Brolin and Bardem, No Country for Old Men is tautly paced and stylishly shot as a masterclass in neo-Westerns.
12. For a Few Dollars More
The appeal of Westerns is a global one, with many foreign countries trying their own hand to capture the romanticized Wild West and its cowboy archetypes. One of the most prolific countries to put their own signature spin on the Western genre is Italy, especially celebrated filmmaker Sergio Leone. After delving into the Spaghetti Western subgenre with 1964’s A Fistful of Dollars, Leone immediately crafted an even more expertly made follow-up in 1965’s For a Few Dollars More.
While For a Few Dollars More reunited Leone with much of the cast and crew from A Fistful of Dollars, including star Clint Eastwood, the 1965 movie features a standalone story unrelated to its predecessor. Eastwood plays a bounty hunter nicknamed Manco who teams up with the mysterious Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) to take on a gang led by the vicious Indio (Gian Maria Volonté). The most tightly paced Leone Western, For a Few Dollars More, has Eastwood and Van Cleef deftly steal every scene they share as the ultimate gunslinging duo.
11. The Wild Bunch
Filmmaker Sam Peckinpah garnered a reputation for being an absolute firebrand on set, which was reinforced by the level of graphic violence in his movies at the time. Peckinpah’s most acclaimed film is 1969’s The Wild Bunch, a revisionist Western that followed a group of aging robbers in 1913. After fleeing from a botched heist to Mexico, the group becomes embroiled in the bloody conflict between the Mexican government and the legendary revolutionary Pancho Villa.
Even over 50 years since its original theatrical release, The Wild Bunch retains much of the shock and awe that overwhelmed audiences upon its debut. Lead actor William Holden gives one of the best performances of his lengthy career as the leader of aging outlaws, while the climactic shootout always commands the viewer’s full attention. From its opening heist gone wrong to its meditative closing scene, The Wild Bunch is a Western that will stick with the audience long after the credits end.
10. Hell or High Water
Before creating the enormous television hit Yellowstone, screenwriter Taylor Sheridan teamed up with director David Mackenzie for the 2016 neo-Western Hell or High Water. The movie stars Chris Pine and Ben Foster performed as a pair of hard-luck brothers who resort to robbing regional banks to avoid a foreclosure on their family’s land. Pursuing them is a veteran Texas Ranger, played by Jeff Bridges, who discovers this routine case is more brutal than he had anticipated.
While he didn’t direct Hell or High Water, Sheridan played with a lot of the tones and themes that would inform Yellowstone and make that television series work so well. Similarly, Mackenzie proves to be a natural at expertly helming the movie, knowing when to dial up the tension and when to shift the pacing down to focus on the humanistic core driving the story. Masterfully played by its cast and crew, Hell or High Water stands as the best neo-Western movie of its generation.
9. Dances with Wolves
Prolific filmmaker and actor Kevin Costner made his feature directorial debut with 1990’s Dances with Wolves, adapting the 1988 novel by Michael Blake. The movie follows Army officer John Dunbar (Costner), who chooses an assignment along the Western frontier, where he befriends the nearby Lakota tribe. As Dunbar gains the tribe’s trust, he must contend with his fellow soldiers who have their own violent designs for the Lakota Sioux that will change their way of life forever.
For a directorial debut, Costner delivers one of the most sweepingly beautiful and meditative Westerns in recent memory, with the full grandeur of the untamed landscapes on full display. While Dunbar’s journey has become something of a cliche archetype, Dances with Wolves plays out simplistically and understatedly, like cinematic poetry. For his work, Costner would win Best Director and Dances with Wolves earned Best Picture, cementing its place as Western royalty.
8. Django Unchained
To date, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s most commercially successful film is the 2012 Western Django Unchained, starring Jamie Foxx as the eponymous bounty hunter. Set shortly before the American Civil War, German bounty hunter Hannibal Schultz, played by Christoph Waltz in an Academy Award-winning turn, frees a slave named Django. After training Django to become a deadly bounty hunter, Schultz and his gifted protege set out to rescue Django’s enslaved wife from the sinister plantation owner Calvin Candy (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Divided into two very clear acts, Django Unchained veers from the entertaining Western camaraderie between its leads in its first half to an intense and suspenseful journey into Hell for its second. Foxx and Schultz make for an incredibly charming pair, while DiCaprio and co-star Samuel L. Jackson play the most villainous characters of both of their extensive acting careers. With all the style, blood, and thunder that comes with a Tarantino flick, Django Unchained is one of the best Westerns of the 21st century and among Tarantino’s best films.
7. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
John Wayne and his frequent collaborator, director John Ford, built an enduring legacy of Westerns led by archetypal cowboys who triumphed over lawless villains and won the affections of their love interests. One of Wayne and Ford’s last collaborations, 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, not only doesn’t conclude with a happy ending for its presumed hero but is one of the most cynical movies either man ever made. Set primarily in the waning days of the Wild West, the movie has a frontier lawyer team up with a gunfighter to confront a notorious outlaw terrorizing their town.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance deconstructs the myth-making that romanticized so much of the Wild West and cowboy archetype, culminating in its melancholic ending. This is enhanced by the moody black-and-white cinematography, even as color movies had long become the dominant presentation in major Hollywood productions like this one. A postmodern Western before the genre became defined by them, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance revels in demystifying the gunslinger trope and legend of the old west.
6. The Searchers
Though The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance gives a meditative coda to Wayne and Ford’s Western collaborations; the apex of their more conventional work in the genre is 1956’s The Searchers. Set in 1868, former Confederate soldier Ethan Edwards (Wayne) is restless without a war to fight. But after a Comanche raid results in his nieces being kidnapped, he obsessively sets out to rescue them. However, as the search continues over the course of five years, Ethan’s companions realize that bloody revenge is more what motivates him than rescuing his family.
The Searchers is an enormously influential masterpiece of the genre, especially for filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, with its sweeping cinematography and solid character development. Ethan is one of the most complex characters that Wayne ever played, and rather than being a noble rescuer, the movie presents him as an antisocial and violent outsider. Gorgeously shot and deceptively deep in its themes and characters, The Searchers is the finest movie Ford has ever directed.
5. Unforgiven
Filmmaker and actor Clint Eastwood owes much of his career to Westerns, first gaining traction starring in the television series Rawhide before kickstarting his transition to movies starring Spaghetti Westerns. With 1992’s Unforgiven, Eastwood set out to craft a requiem and his own personal swan song to the genre that made him a star, pulling triple duty as the film’s director, producer, and lead actor. Eastwood stars as retired gunfighter Will Munny, who is hired to avenge sex workers terrorized by a corrupt sheriff in a small Wyoming town.
Unforgiven is really a postmodern approach to Westerns, stripping away the glamorization of violence and demystifying the gunslinger archetype. The movie’s themes focus on the fading of legends, the price of violence and infamy, and contain some of the more stripped-down gunfights in the genre. Immensely quotable and the perfect Western for Eastwood to end his Western career, Unforgiven would go on to win him his first Academy Award for Best Picture.
4. Tombstone
Between all the postmodern and revisionist takes on the Western genre that proliferated the ‘80s and ‘90s, it felt like storytellers forgot that the genre can, and often should, be a lot of fun. 1993’s Tombstone instilled that sense of freewheeling fun back into Westerns as it depicted the historical Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, with plenty of creative liberties taken for the sake of entertainment. The movie follows lawman Wyatt Earp as he rallies his brothers and friend Doc Holliday to take on a group of marauders terrorizing the American Southwest and Mexico.
Right from the opening rampage of the villainous Clanton Gang, Tombstone just oozes style and swagger that is missing from the vast majority of modern Westerns. Kurt Russell delivers one of his finest performances as Earp while Val Kilmer commands full attention whenever he’s on-screen for his eccentric and quotable performance as Holliday. And for all the style and charismatic performances, Tombstone is just a phenomenal, superbly constructed movie that breathes new life into the Western genre.
3. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
With each consecutive film project, filmmaker Sergio Leone steadily increased the scale and scope of each Western story he was telling for the silver screen. The culmination of Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, the informal trilogy of Westerns starring Clint Eastwood as a relatively nameless gunslinger character in standalone adventures, is 1966’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Set in the midst of the American Civil War, the movie follows three gunfighters who are on the hunt for a hidden cache of gold.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is the definitive Spaghetti Western, capturing all the nuance of an Italian Western production with matchless grandeur. In Eli Wallach, who plays the rascally bandit Tuco and a co-lead in the story, the movie finds its scene-stealer character, while co-stars Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef are reliably good at rounding out the eponymous trio. A nearly three-hour film that never overstays its welcome, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is easily Eastwood’s best foray into the Western genre.
2. Rio Bravo
Though John Wayne is often linked to his Western movie collaborations with director John Ford, his most unabashedly entertaining Western film in his long career was with director Howard Hawks. Annoyed by the themes and premise of the 1952 Western High Noon, Hawks and Wayne made 1959’s Rio Bravo as a direct rebuke to the earlier film. Whereas High Noon followed a sheriff who constantly looks for help from the townspeople he protects and nearly deserts his civic duty, Rio Bravo featured a sheriff who refuses outside help as he faces a local crime boss.
Whatever the inspiration behind Rio Bravo was, the movie is just a lot of fun, with the most engaging and charismatic ensemble cast that Wayne ever led. Rio Bravo is perfectly paced and punctuated with plenty of gunfights and strong character moments, including a nearly dialogue-less prologue that stands as Hawks’ best-directed scene. With such an incredible end result, Hawks would reunite with Wayne for two loose retreads of the core Rio Bravo premise while John Carpenter cited the movie as a major inspiration behind his classic Assault on Precinct 13.
1. Once Upon a Time in the West
Despite Spaghetti Westerns initially having a derisive reputation in Hollywood, American studios quickly recognized Sergio Leone as an absolute master filmmaker of the Western genre by the late ‘60s. After his increasing success, Hollywood invited Leone to make a big-budget Western for them, leading to the production of 1968’s Once Upon a Time in the West. Featuring an all-star cast, the movie was intended by Leone to be his final word on the Western genre in a story that signaled the swan song of the gunfighters that defined the Wild West.
From its extended prologue with a tense gunfight at a remote train station to the final duel set to composer Ennio Morricone’s haunting score, Once Upon in the West is an operatic classic in the genre. After decades of playing nice guy roles, Henry Fonda delivers his most effectively chilling performance in his long career as the story’s merciless antagonist with the most memorable character introduction in any Leone movie. Matching him are co-stars Charles Bronson and Jason Robards, powering the immense confidence that makes Once Upon a Time in the West the true epic that the genre deserves.
Published: Aug 21, 2024 10:01 am