25 Classic Westerns You Can Watch Right Now
Like the old American West itself, the glory days of the Western are long behind us, but it has nevertheless gone down in history as one of the most venerable genres. The style and techniques of the Western were adopted or adapted in one way or another by almost everyone who ever picked up a camera. ( Star Trek was intended to be a space western, after all.)
It is sometimes seen as a reflexively nostalgic and conservative genre, with the reactionary John Wayne serving as its poster child, but many directors have also explored its darker side (even some of Wayne’s own films are much more complex than simple cowboys and Indians stories). ). Here are 25 films that represent the best of the broad genre. Enjoy, buddy.
Blood on the Moon (1948)
The name Robert Wise does not appear often among the great directors of classic Hollywood, perhaps because he is so difficult to define; His resume includes musicals such as West Side Story and The Sound of Music , horror and science fiction films such as The Haunting and The Day the Earth Stood Still , and one of the greatest Westerns, Blood on the Moon with Starring Robert Mitchum. It’s a Western, like a film noir, where young Mitchum plays Jim Harry, a drifter who is brought in to star in a scheme to defraud a cattle owner and the locals on a local reservation. Things quickly go south.
Where to watch: digital rental
Johnny Guitar (1954)
This low-budget film by Nicholas Ray isn’t one of Joan Crawford’s best-known films, but it’s one of my favorites—visually stylish and textually captivating. Playing a lonely, no-nonsense saloon owner in the wilds of Arizona’s old west, Crawford’s character is introduced by one of her employees as just that: “I’ve never met a more masculine woman.” Her nemesis is a “cattle baron” played by Mercedes McCambridge. There are male love interests, but they are largely secondary in the tumultuous battle of revenge between the two women, who often fight head-to-head while clad in black leather that borders on fetishistic. Amazing thing.
Where to watch: digital rental
The Harder They Fall (2021)
This modern Western tells the story of real-life black American cowboy Nat Love (Jonathan Majors), joined by several other characters from American history played by Idris Elba, Zazie Beetz, Regina King and Delroy Lindo. . This isn’t a history lesson by any means, but Westerns have never been particularly concerned with turning true stories of the old American West into something like mythology. Here, young Nat Love’s parents are murdered by Elba’s outlaw Rufus Buck, sending Love on a lifelong quest for revenge and a series of brilliantly exciting shootouts, stunts and chases that pay tribute to the classics of the genre.
Where to watch: Netflix
Red River (1948)
This largely fictional film by Howard Hawks tells the story of the very first cattle drive along the Chisolm Trail from Texas to Kansas. It tells the story of once successful rancher Thomas Dunson (John Wayne), who is short of money after the Civil War. leads the trip with his sensitive young protégé Matt Garth (Montgomery Clift). The two collide on a long journey, their rivalry reaching epic proportions, but the real heat comes when they are joined by professional action hero Cherry Valance (John Ireland), who immediately confuses Matt before seemingly throwing him off guard – the scene during which the two men compare weapons almost creates a text with gay overtones.
Where to watch: Tubi, MGM+, digital rental.
The Power of the Dog (2021)
Speaking of textless queer themes, Jane Campion’s revisionist slow-burn Western is incredibly gay. Benedict Cumberbatch is a revelation as Phil (who expected the lanky Brit to effectively helm a Western) determined to prove he’s the toughest cowboy in 1925 Montana (via New Zealand, where it was filmed). Phil is cruel, perhaps to compensate for the loss of the man he once loved, and keeps his family in line as ruthlessly as cattle, at least until Rose (Kirsten Dunst) begins an affair with Phil’s younger brother. George (Jesse Plemms). , questioning everyone’s place on the ranch.
Where to watch: Netflix
No (2022)
Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer play sibling caretakers of a rural California horse ranch who are surrounded by… something? The wildly original, if often annoying, tagline called it a “neo-Western sci-fi horror film” that tells you that you’re in for something unique. Writer-director Jordan Peele makes the most of the wide-open vistas surrounding Haywood Ranch, both on the ground and in the vast western sky.
Where to watch: Starz, digital rental.
Tombstone (1993)
One of the best films about the famous shootout at the OK Corral, Tombstone did decently (sorry) at the box office, but its reputation only grew over the decades, thanks in large part to Val Kilmer’s transformative performance as the slick actor. sickly and drunk Doc Holliday. That performance (“I’m Your Blueberry”), along with Kurt Russell’s stoic Wyatt Earp, gave the film an afterlife in the pantheon of “dad movies,” and everything that unfolds around them is good, too.
Where to watch: Paramount+ , Hulu , digital rental.
My Darling Clementine (1946)
The earlier, definitive OK Corral is one of John Ford’s best films, even if it doesn’t enjoy the same acclaim as the director’s other classic Westerns. Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp in the story of the famous shootout, and Victor Mature plays Doc Holliday. The pace is much slower than you’d expect from a film about a notorious gunfight, but that’s a big credit to the film: Ford is less interested in gunfire than in the everyday rituals of Western life, with the specter of violence always lurking just off-screen.
Where to watch: digital rental
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Kurt Russell, no stranger to modern Westerns, plays Sheriff Franklin Hunt, in charge of a posse trying to rescue a young woman (a shade of The Searchers ) from a group of inbred cannibals in the 1890s West. The “weird” Western, in which we encounter ghosts, aliens or, in this case, cannibals of the Old West, is a venerable genre in literature that is rarely seen on screen. Even with elements of comedy, this film becomes increasingly violent, which fits well with its dual identity of horror and western.
Where to watch: Netflix, Hulu , digital rental.
Stagecoach (1939)
John Ford had been a director for more than two decades before Stagecoach , starting in the same year that his films Young Mr. Lincoln and Drums Along the Mohawk were also released, followed in 1940 by The Grapes of Wrath and The Long Way Home “ and all of them were nominated for Oscars in various categories. Stagecoach is also the film that gave John Wayne his breakout role, but he’s just part of an impressive ensemble cast of main stagecoach passengers whom we follow on their journey through dangerous territory. Some plot elements now play into Western clichés, largely because this movie invented them.
Where to watch: Tubi, The Criterion Channel, Max , Prime Video
Forty Guns (1957)
Director Samuel Fuller gives Barbara Stanwyck one of the best performances of her career: dressed all in black on a white horse, she leads the film’s forty gunmen down a deserted trail, terrorizing several guys in a wagon. This is smug Jessica Drummond, who rules her Arizona town with an iron fist. A gunslinger arrives, wanting to put one of his men behind bars, and sparks fly as they collide, sparking heat towards each other. Drummond is clearly the villain here, but Stanwyck plays her with such effortless cool that you don’t care.
Where to watch: Tubi
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
As Italian spaghetti westerns taught us, Americans aren’t always the best at the Western genre—here, Taiwanese director Ang Lee directs Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in a beautiful, melancholy adaptation of Annie Proulx’s story. Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist are a pair of sheep herders on Brokeback Mountain with too much time on their hands and their growing hobby. This is all good when they are in the mountains, and even worse when they return to the city.
Where to watch: Max , digital rental
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
That he played one of the greatest bastards (Fred Dobbs) in film history is a tribute to Humphrey Bogart’s unique charm, and yet we can never bring ourselves to hate him. Although set in Mexico, writer-director John Huston’s film is unique in its American theme: Dobbs and company head into the mountains in hopes of promised gold, but greed and paranoia take hold of the group in increasingly terrifying ways: greedy, sweaty, American stupidity is leading them to destruction.
Where to watch: digital rental
Bad Day in Black Rock (1955)
Despite being set just a few years before its release, John Sturges’ neo-western feels authentic to the more traditional westerns of the era while still carrying a noir sensibility. Spencer Tracy plays John J. MacReady, a one-armed stranger who comes to a desert town to investigate the death of a Japanese American interned during World War II. The locals are not used to town crooks coming and asking them questions, and tensions rise across the vast open landscape as MacReady tries to uncover the truth among the racist townspeople.
Where to watch: digital rental
Shane (1953)
Charming former gunfighter Shane (Alan Ladd) is the Western hero in George Stevens’s landmark film. He’s a quiet, incredibly talented gunslinger with a mysterious past who comes to town and unwittingly disrupts the social order when he clashes with a less savory character in Jack Palance’s Jack Wilson. The film centers on Joey Starrett (Brandon DeWilde), a gentle child who falls in love with Shane even as conflict between the settlers and the nomadic herders threatens to erupt. The ending is truly for all time.
Where to watch: Paramount+ , MGM+, Prime Video.
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Cleavon Little plays Bart, a black railroad worker who becomes the sheriff of a small Western town that isn’t very happy about the appearance of a non-white lawman. This film is likely to be Mel Brooks’ magnum opus, as biting a satire of the sheer stupidity of American racism as you’re likely to see, but also extremely silly and admirably determined to keep us laughing the entire time. Gene Wilder plays an alcoholic gunfighter, Harvey Korman plays crooked politician Hedley Lamarr [sic], and Madeline Kahn’s performance as Lili von Stupp earned her an Oscar nomination (she should have won).
Where to watch: digital rental
High Noon (1952)
Former marshal Will Kane leaves town with his new wife Amy (Grace Kelly) when he learns that the criminal he put away is out for revenge. Seeking help from the local townspeople, he discovers that his friends are glad to abandon him in his darkest hour, and the tension rises as the plot unfolds in real time. The “High Noon ” policy against blacklisting and witch hunts was so powerful at the time that John Wayne called it “the most un-American thing I ever saw in my whole life.” He responded with Rio Bravo , and while that film is also a classic, the simple power of High Noon holds up much better.
Where to watch: Paramount+ , MGM+, Prime Video.
Back to the Future Part III (1990)
The conclusion of the Back to the Future trilogy goes all-Western (more or less) as Marty (Michael J. Fox) follows Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) back to 1885 Hill Valley, where history suggests Doc was killed by ” Mad Dog.” “Tannen. It’s the sweetest of the three films, centering on Doc’s charming romance with resourceful schoolteacher Clara Clayton (Mary Steenburgen), and entertaining all the staple Western movie tropes: a cavalry chase, a shootout, a saloon binge, and even a grand chase involving a steam engine. .
Where to watch: Netflix, digital rental.
True Grit (2010)
It’s easy to forget that this is a Coen Brothers film, avoiding much of the quirkiness that comes with that label. Instead, it’s a surprisingly effective and moving Western in the classic sense of the word, combining genuine heart with earned cynicism, and going deeper and darker than the 1969 original (also based on a novel by Charles Portis). When Josh Brolin’s criminal Tom Chaney murders her father, 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) hires Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to avenge him. They’re joined by a Texas Ranger played by Matt Damon, and the resulting film treats the violence of the Old West as a grim fact of life rather than something exciting.
Where to watch: Paramount+ , digital rental.
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name trilogy starring Clint Eastwood remains one of the best epic spaghetti westerns, but he followed it up with a statement about a genre that is both definitive and rule-breaking. It’s a long story with a convoluted subplot involving water rights around a town called Flagstone, which is fought over by everyone who knows the water means the new railroad will have to stop there (think Chinatown , decades ago). Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci contributed to the script, which deviates from the orthodoxy of the American Western, referencing the ideas of exploited workers and ruthless capitalists.
Where to watch: MGM+. Paramount+ , Prime Video
Unforgiven (1992)
Clint Eastwood’s Best Picture Oscar winner captures a melancholic moment in film history when it became clear to even veterans like Eastwood that the Western, if not entirely dead, was certainly a relic of the past. This is not unlike the changes that occur in 1880 in Unforgiven : the brutal frontier days are giving way, although many of those still alive know only the old ways. Aging mobster William Munny (Clint Eastwood) and his friend Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) are called upon to avenge a disfiguring attack on a prostitute, while Sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), representing the new West, attempts to eradicate their kin. vigilance. What seemed like a swan song in 1992 spawned a new generation of Westerns like Tombstone .
Where to watch: digital rental
Django (1966)
Sergio Corbucci’s classic spaghetti western was deliberately conceived as a rival to Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, and with over 30 (mostly unofficial) remakes and sequels, I’d say mission accomplished. In the film, considered savagely violent at the time, a beaming Franco Nero, dressed in the remains of a Confederate uniform, drags a coffin along the U.S.-Mexico border. When a former Confederate officer tries to kill a Mexican-American sex worker by tying her to a burning cross, we learn what’s in the coffin and why racists would be better off not attacking Django, a theme brought up in a tribute to Quentin Tarantino. Django Unchained .
Where to watch: Peacock , digital rental
Dead Man (1995)
Jim Jarmusch’s postmodern western (featuring a Neil Young soundtrack, ffs) features mild-mannered accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) on the run after committing an unplanned murder. A local man named Nobody (Gary Farmer, who recently played Dan Twelvetrees in Resident Alien ) finds him and warns him that the bullet in his chest will kill him, at least in the long run. What follows is a psychedelic journey as Blake begins to understand Nobody’s history and his place in it.
Where to watch: Max , The Criterion Channel
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Another Coen brothers genre film, this time even more successful (and darker) than True Grit . Despite being set in the 1980s, it’s hard to watch a single moment of No Country for Old Men and not feel like we’re completely indoctrinated in Western stereotypes. The crime drama, adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, also has a nightmare quality – a sense of grim inevitability for all the main characters. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds himself unable to resist grabbing the money left over from a drug deal gone wrong, which puts him in the crosshairs of a pursuing killer named Chigurh (a terrifying Javier Bardem); Both are sought by the aging Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who has almost given up on America. It’s not about the splendor of big skies and open country, but about the despair that creeps around the edges.
Where to watch: Prime Video
Buck and the Preacher (1972)
Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut doesn’t always make it onto best Western lists, and that’s too bad; the actor/director deftly moves between tones of melancholy and rage, somehow doing so with a subtle edge that borders on comedy. Foregrounding the tensions and kinship between blacks and Native Americans in the old West (circa 1860s), the film shows Poitier-Bac leading a wagon train of black Americans from the southwest and away from former slave territories negotiating with the natives tribes for safe passage through them. path. In the beginning, Buck and company are pursued by mercenaries of plantation owners who want to bring back or kill their workers, not really caring who. Buck receives unexpected help from (fake) Preacher Harry Belafonte, a disreputable but surprisingly admirable conman; The mismatched couple has great chemistry.
Where to watch: Prime Video