The 28 Best Westerns of All Time
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Before there was Hollywood, there was the Wild West. A choose-your-own-adventure frontier where the strong-willed blazed their trails and the weak-willed stayed home. (If you ever played The Oregon Trail in middle school computer class, you can only imagine the stakes of the IRL version.)
With a natural vagabond spirit, it’s no wonder that the film industry has flocked to the Western genre like pigs to a trough. Sooey! The Western is where the outlaws meet bounty hunters, where order meets chaos, and where man meets unforgiving nature.
With miles and miles of uncharted terrain, there’s plenty of exploring to do no matter where you start. From Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, saddle up for some high-quality films that we’ve roped in for ye, partner. It’s about to be a wild ride.
Shane
If you haven’t seen any westerns from the '50s, Shane holds up well. The film boasts beautiful landscape cinematography, thrilling story moments, and a quietly brilliant performance from Alan Ladd as the titular gunslinger.
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Tombstone
There was a great crop of new westerns that came along in the ‘90s after the classic Hollywood era. With a cast portraying infamous real western figures, including Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp, Sam Elliott as Virgil Earp, and Val Kilmer giving a career-highlight performance as Doc Holliday. This cult classic has only become more legendary over time.
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El Mariachi
The debut film from Robert Rodriguez is bursting with slick action—and it moves at an unrelenting pace, wringing every penny out of its shoestring budget. Due to a case of mistaken identity, a young aspiring mariachi is beset by a group of hitmen sent by a drug lord to kill a different local criminal.
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The Hateful Eight
Surprise, surprise: Quentin Tarantino brought a very unique spin to the western in The Hateful Eight. The claustrophobic ensemble mystery begins with eight strangers getting trapped in a stagecoach stopover during a blizzard. The story is chock-full of twists—and every member of the ensemble gets a moment to shine.
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Unforgiven
We could fill the whole list with Clint Eastwood movies if we really wanted to, but you shouldn’t sleep on his turn in Unforgiven, where Eastwood flexes his chops as both a leading man and the film’s director. With a classic setup of an aging gunslinger having to double back for one last job, Eastwood deconstructs the genre by approaching it with much more harshness than some idealized Golden Age films.
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Dances with Wolves
If you want to lose yourself in a truly epic adventure, Dances with Wolves is a great watch. Director Kevin Costner also stars as a Union Army Lieutenant who is sent to man a military post far in the frontier, developing a relationship with a tribe of Lakota Sioux Native Americans.
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The Quick and the Dead
This criminally underrated film from Evil Dead director Sam Raimi has been positively reappraised for its frenetic cinematography, fun story of a deadly dueling tournament in the town of Redemption, and excellent performances from stars like Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, and a young Leonardo DiCaprio.
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McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Another classic revisionist western that worked to subvert the expected conventions of the genre, McCabe & Mrs. Miller really feels like a slice of life in the boom town of Presbyterian Church, Washington. Over the course of the film, you grow to love the characters and care for the growing town. You see it transition from fall to winter, while threatening influences intrude to get a piece of the pie.
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The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Along with incredible eye candy with some of the slickest cinematography across the whole genre (thank you, Roger Deakins!), the powerful lead performances from Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck in The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford put fascinating faces on real figures from western history.
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Hell or High Water
Take one look at Jeff Bridges’s mustache in this movie and try to tell us this isn’t an all-time western. Hell or High Water was a shot in the arm for the genre, with a blistering modern heist story that follows two brothers trying to rob enough banks to save their family’s ranch—while Texas Rangers are hot on their heels.
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The Magnificent Seven (1960)
With an all-star cast of veritable legends including Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and Eli Wallach as the villain, this western was adapted from the phenomenal Akira Kurosawa film Seven Samurai to great success.
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Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain doesn’t come up nearly enough as a classic of the genre, especially for the aughts. Along with its absorbing and tragic romance tale, Brokeback Mountain is a lovingly captured film that shows us the inner drama of the characters and sweeping, epic landscapes with thought and care.
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Open Range
Yet another excellent western directed by Kevin Costner—way before his Yellowstone days, by the way—Open Range is a classic from the aughts. Robert Duvall and Costner deliver excellent lead performances as an open ranger and his hired hand, respectively, who clash with the ruthless leader of a town that hates open rangers.
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The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
One of the first early-Hollywood productions to be shot outside of the United States, this story of broke drifers joining an old prospector to try and strike it rich panning gold in Mexico is gorgeous and sweeping. Legendary leading man Humphrey Bogart and the director John Huston’s father, Watler Huston, are highlights in this film.
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Appaloosa
Appaloosa is a taut, stripped-back thriller directed by and starring Ed Harris. He stars as a lawman hired by the titular New Mexico town to help free it from the clutches of a ruthless rancher—who is played by the one and only Jeremy Irons, who killed the last sheriff.
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Winchester ‘73
You didn’t need technicolor to capture the landscape of the American West. The black-and-white photography of this western has aged gracefully—and it’s fun to see star James Stewart in a more action-oriented role as a gunslinger with a score to settle.
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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Believe it or not, this film has nothing to do with America’s beloved indie film festival. Selected for the United States National Film Registry, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a classic tale of two outlaws who head out on the lam after a botched train robbery.
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The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
From Spaghetti Western visionary Sergio Leone, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is an Italian epic set in the Civil War era in which three men compete for a hidden fortune.
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The Searchers
Nothing says “Western” quite like John Ford directing and John Wayne as the leading man. Wayne stars as a Civil War veteran who embarks on a search for his abducted niece, alongside his nephew.
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High Noon
A town marshal on the verge of retirement catches wind that a group of outlaws is planning to kill him the next day at noon. Faced with a moral dilemma, he must decide whether to take on the outlaws alone, or flee town and hang up his badge for good.
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Stagecoach
Another John Ford and John Wayne classic, Stagecoach follows the course of a motley crew of passengers on their journey across the Wild West to New Mexico in 1880.
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True Grit
Hailee Steinfeld, Jeff Bridges, and Matt Damon star in this Coen Brothers Western remake as an unlikely trio who join forces when they realize they are tracking down the same murderous outlaw. What begins as one daughter’s quest to avenge her murdered father becomes an adventurous, and perilous, test of true grit.
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No Country for Old Men
Another Coen Brothers 21st-century western, No Country for Old Men stars Josh Brolin as a hunter whose own trail starts being tracked after he stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong.
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Red River
John Wayne stars as a frontiersman leading his cattle drive to Missouri in hopes of reaping the hard-earned fruits of his labor. However, his road to fortune becomes bumpy when his caravan of once-loyal farmhands begins to turn on him.
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The Wild Bunch
A heist film gone western, The Wild Bunch follows one outlaw’s final heist with his “wild bunch.” However, his retirement from the fast life grows more distant than he expected when he realizes that the heist was a set-up by his old partner.
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My Darling Clementine
Nothing says revenge like returning to the town where your brother was murdered and becoming its sheriff. Based on the fictionalized biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, My Darling Clementine follows Earp’s journey for vengeance as the sheriff of Tombstone, where he finds both purpose and love
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Rio Bravo
John Wayne plays the sheriff off Rio Bravo, Texas in this feature. He arrests a man for murder with the help of the town drunk, played by Dean Martin. However, the sheriff’s duty proves twofold when he realizes the murderer is the brother of a wealthy rancher who is determined to free him.
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Once Upon a Time in the West
Another classic spaghetti western from Sergio Leone, Once Upon a Time in the West is a dual narrative of two incidents unfolding in the fictional western town of Flagstone. One: a land dispute. The other: revenge.
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