24 Greatest Westerns of All Time
John Wayne and Clint Eastwood are movie legends. Although they acted in different types of movies, they reached legendary status in Westerns.
Stories about cowboys and the open range existed long before the invention of cinema. But the genre found its ideal medium when movies came along. The Western’s wide vistas and thrilling shootouts make for great images.
The biggest fans of Westerns recognize the many different forms of the genre, from traditional tales of good guys in white hats to the moral greys of revisionist Westerns. These fans often put these 24 movies at the top.
Rio Bravo (1959)
With its simple tale of three good guys standing up against overwhelming challenges, Rio Bravo might feel cliched to first-time viewers. But that’s just because director Howard Hawkes and screenwriters Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett set the mold with Rio Bravo.
Rio Bravo stars a never-better John Wayne as Sheriff John T. Chance, who draws the ire of a land baron after arresting his brother. Chance assembles a group of misfits to help, including Dean Martin’s drunk Dude, Ricky Nelson as spunky youth Colorado, and Stumpy, the old codger played by genre mainstay Walter Brennan.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
If Rio Bravo captures the full mystique of John Wayne, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly showcases Clint Eastwood at his best. Part of the Man With No Name Trilogy, three movies directed by Sergio Leone and starring Eastwood as a wandering hero, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a cowboy epic.
Eastwood stars as Blondie, alongside Eli Wallach as the scoundrel Tuco, a pair who make their money by bilking locals. They search for buried treasure while avoiding the cruel Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef), leading to a jaw-dropping sequence set on a Civil War battlefield.
True Grit (2010)
As this list demonstrates, John Wayne deserves all the praise he can get. But the Duke’s swagger made him a poor fit for Rooster Cogburn, the alcoholic U.S. Marshal from Charles Portis’s novel True Grit. For their 2010 version, directors Joel and Ethan Coen found a better candidate in Jeff Bridges.
Bridges captures Cogburn’s wounded pride, and Hailee Steinfeld, in her first feature film role, controls the screen as Mattie Ross, the aggrieved woman who hires Rooster. Furthermore, the Coens understand Portis’s idiosyncratic dialogue, bringing his tale of Western toughness to the screen.
Stagecoach (1939)
Before Mad Max: Fury Road, there was Stagecoach. The 1939 film has a simple (and, in all honesty, quite racist) plot, in which a group of travelers go through Apache country via stagecoach. The movie portrays the Natives as faceless barbarians, lacking the dignity offered to the white characters.
It’s a testament to John Ford’s barebones direction that Stagecoach remains an important work, despite its uglier aspects. Ford lays down the fundamentals of action filmmaking in every shot, buoyed by John Wayne in his breakout role.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
By 1962, John Wayne established himself as the king of Westerns, Likewise, audiences knew Jimmy Stewart as an all-American nice guy. Director John Ford used both of those reputations for the meeting of the icons in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
When lawyer Ranse Stoddard (Stewart) arrives in the frontier town Shinbone, he expects civilization and order, but salt-of-the-earth rancher Tom Doniphon (Wayne) knows better. The rivalry and friendship between the two represent the possibility, and peril, of the Old West.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Most Westerns emphasize the loneliness of the prairie more than the connection between lovers. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, based on the story by Annie Proulx, offers both.
Ranch hands Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) take solitary jobs out in the wilderness to stay away from society, but they find warmth and acceptance in one another. That same wilderness becomes the place that keeps them apart in this stirring, aching romance.
Johnny Guitar (1954)
The first half of Johnny Guitar plays like a melodrama, in which the imperious saloon owner Vienna (Joan Crawford) reconnects with her lost love Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden). Most of those sections stay cloistered within the bar while Vienna and Johnny work out their differences, despite the threat mounting against her.
But as the movie continues, director Nicholas Ray builds to a bleak and violent climax, one driven by Mercedes McCambridge’s searing performance as Vienna’s rival.
Unforgiven (1992)
The Western genre doesn’t lend itself to the same self-aware critique embraced by other genres, which makes Unforgiven all the more impressive.
Clint Eastwood directs and stars as William Munny, a former gunslinger much in the vein of his most famous characters. Forced back to work, Munny must reckon with the sins of his past as well as the hateful sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman).
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
On their most basic level, Westerns are stories about communities, the strange associations that come together just outside of civilization. As such, Westerns are the ideal genre for New Hollywood director Robert Altman, who loved to chronicle bands of weirdos.
In McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Altman uses the romance between the titular gambler (Warren Beatty) and madame (Julie Christie) as a framework to study the oddities on the frontier.
The Searchers (1956)
Whatever the shortcomings of John Wayne’s take on Rooster Cogburn, the Duke excelled at playing the broken-down Civil War vet Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, directed by John Ford.
Wayne wears on his face the full weight of the violence and regret bearing down on Edwards. As he and his adopted nephew (Jeffrey Hunter) search for his abducted niece (Natalie Wood), Edwards fights to save a civilized world that can never be his.
High Noon (1952)
Like Rio Bravo, High Noon has a plot so totemic that it almost feels like a cliche. When the criminal Frank Miller gets released from prison, he plans to return and seek revenge against the aging lawman (Gary Cooper) who put him away.
Despite its familiarity, High Noon still feels immediate, thanks to Fred Zinnemann’s able direction and a tense score by Dimitri Tiomkin.
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Although not as satisfying as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in America is Sergio Leone’s masterpiece. With its mix of characters, including Henry Fonda playing against type as a sadistic outlaw, Once Upon a Time in America is the ideal Spaghetti Western.
Everything wonderful about Once Upon a Time in the West can be found in its first scene, a long, slow sequence involving criminals waiting for a train. The sense of atmosphere that Leone builds, helped along by Ennio Morricone’s iconic score, imagines the Old West as a place of long waits between bursts of violence.
3:10 to Yuma (1957)
Like Once Upon a Time in the West, the Elmore Leonard adaptation 3:10 to Yuma knows that the Old West involves a lot of waiting. In particular, 3:10 to Yuma involves desperate rancher Dan Evans (Van Heflin) waiting for the train to arrive, so he can deposit notorious outlaw Ben Wade (Glenn Ford) and collect a much-needed reward.
Director Delmer Daves and screenwriter Halsted Welles let Wade and Evans fill that time with debates. The charismatic Wade charms and terrifies Evans, disrupting any simple morality.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
No Country For Old Men uses the desolation of the desert as a stand-in for the emptiness of the human heart. Joel and Ethan Coen bring to life the bleak Cormac McCarthy novel, both its meaningless violence and its dark humor.
Tommy Lee Jones plays a respected sheriff on the trail of an average guy (Josh Brolin) who steals a bag full of money after a drug bust gone bad. In the middle of it all is Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh, a cartel assassin whose strange haircut and sense of fairness belies his dangerous nature.
Blazing Saddles (1974)
With Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks and his team of writers (including an uncredited Richard Pryor) created one of the funniest movies of all time. He also created a bona fide proper Western, complete with a great song by Frankie Laine.
Blazing Saddles works because Brooks loves and understands the genre, making Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder’s takes more than just riffs on Rio Bravo and The Magnificent Seven.
Tombstone (1993)
While movies such as Stagecoach set the standard for action movies, Westerns often had too slow and deliberate a pace to keep up with the overheated flicks of the 1980s. At least, they did until George P. Cosmatos made Tombstone, a hard-rocking retelling of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Action star Kurt Russell plays Wyatt Earp, who comes into Tombstone and faces off against outlaws led by Curly Bill Brocius (Powers Boothe). With the seductive but dying gentleman Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer) at his side, Earp brings thunderous vengeance upon the bad guys.
The Great Train Robbery (1903)
Clocking in at just 12 minutes, the single-reel silent film The Great Train Robbery doesn’t have the same epic scale as others on this list. What it does have, however, is a sense of purpose.
Made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company, The Great Train Robbery is considered the first crime film, a simple story about a bunch of cowboys holding up a locomotive. Short as it is, The Great Train Robbery includes imagery that continues to influence Westerns to this day.
The Wild Bunch (1969)
A spin-off of the New Hollywood movement, the revisionist Western tried to strip away the mythologies of lawmen and outlaws. Few did it better than Sam Peckinpah with The Wild Bunch, starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, and Warren Oates.
Written by Peckinpah and Walon Green, The Wild Bunch has a plot not unlike many other Westerns, with a group of outlaws trying to get away with one last score. But Peckinpah luxuriates in the carnage wrought by all involved, reducing the shootouts of old to mere bloodbaths.
Dead Man (1995)
Where other filmmakers filled the empty spaces of the Old West with philosophical debates and tense staredowns, independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch fills it with music and poetry in Dead Man.
Set to a psychedelic guitar score by Neil Young, Dead Man follows accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) as he and his newfound Native friend Nobody (the great Gary Farmer) wander across the frontier, seeking revenge or at least enlightenment.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Like The Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid also takes a revisionist lens to the Western. However, its demystification is less concerned with reveling in chaos and destruction and more interested in making legends into ordinary guys.
Paul Newman and Robert Redford play the titular duo, both at the height of their movie-star powers. Director George Roy Hill, working from a screenplay by William Goldman, takes his time with the material, filling the movie with fun character moments instead of just shootouts.
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Bone Tomahawk feels at first like a throwback to the classics of the 1950s, complete with a cowboy song and a slow, methodical plot about a group of men who go into the wilderness looking for kidnapped townspeople. Rich characters, played by Kurt Russell, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins, and others have compelling conversations around the fire, just like the cowboys of old.
But when the men reach their goal, director S. Craig Zahler shifts genres without warning, making Bone Tomahawk into a horror film, complete with an unforgettable kill scene that will haunt viewers’ memories forever.
Buck and the Preacher (1972)
Despite what Hollywood would have people believe, the Old West was not a monoculture, with Black ranchers and cowboys living alongside whites, Natives, Indigenous Mexicans, and immigrants from China and elsewhere.
That fact makes Buck and the Preacher, directed by Sidney Poitier, so important. Poitier stars as a guide taking a group of settlers to their new land, who must deal with a swindler played by Harry Belafonte. Filled with great scenes and buddy comedy energy, Buck and the Preacher is both an important revision to the standard Western and an entertaining watch.
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
Whatever its Shakespearan title might suggest, The Quick and the Dead comes from the mind of two unusual sources, star Sharon Stone and horror movie director Sam Raimi. The two combined to make a zippy tale about revenge during a shooting contest.
In addition to up-and-comers such as Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, Raimi and Stone get some greats to join the cast, including Pat Hingle as a put-upon bartender and Gene Hackman as a former outlaw turned current mayor John Herrod.
The Power of the Dog (2021)
If Alfred Hitchcock was his own genre, then The Power of the Dog is a Hitchcock Western. Based on the novel by Thomas Savage, The Power of the Dog performs a deconstruction of masculine tropes via a psychological thriller about attraction and destruction.
Aussie filmmaker Jane Campion casts Benedict Cumberbatch against type as Phil Burbank, an educated man who wants nothing more than to be seen as a tough cowboy. But when Phil takes to bullying his brother’s new wife (Kirsten Dunst), her son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) engages with and undoes Phil’s facade.
