Before you play Red Dead Redemption, here are a few westerns you need to watch.
May 10, 2010
Ah, Westerns. From the classics featuring "White Hats" and twirling mustaches; to the Spaghettis which sacrificed budget and America for being, well... being good; to the revisionists which mixed our heroes and villains into one big, jumbled, moral quandary of a mess... we love 'em all!
And that's why it was so hard to come up with our "Top 25 Westerns of All-Time" list. The IGN team spent a lot of time on this inventory of great oaters, debating the merits of, for example,Stagecoach versus the insanity of Tears of the Black Tiger. So please remember: This is our list of what we think is the best. We readily acknowledge that there are many films that didn't make the cut here, but very well might've in an alternate reality where, you know, you worked for IGN. But this is Earth Prime, eh?
Our criteria, then, for what made the grade: the films' popularity and longevity with audiences, their impact on the genre, their basic coolness quotient, and their quotability. As always, a tough call here or there was settled by editor's choice.
What do you think of our picks? Sound off in the comments below and let us know. But keep your guns holstered, please.
And that's why it was so hard to come up with our "Top 25 Westerns of All-Time" list. The IGN team spent a lot of time on this inventory of great oaters, debating the merits of, for example,Stagecoach versus the insanity of Tears of the Black Tiger. So please remember: This is our list of what we think is the best. We readily acknowledge that there are many films that didn't make the cut here, but very well might've in an alternate reality where, you know, you worked for IGN. But this is Earth Prime, eh?
Our criteria, then, for what made the grade: the films' popularity and longevity with audiences, their impact on the genre, their basic coolness quotient, and their quotability. As always, a tough call here or there was settled by editor's choice.
What do you think of our picks? Sound off in the comments below and let us know. But keep your guns holstered, please.
"Badges? We ain't got no badges!" Never has there been a movie that's been so quoted by people who had no idea what movie they were quoting. Those who argue that this incredible John Huston/Humphrey Bogart film isn't technically a "western" are almost immediately shot down by its numerous Oscars, accolades and spots on just about everyone on the planet's "Best Of" lists.
Set in the ashes of the Mexican Revolution, Bogey's Dobbs, Walter Huston's Howard and Tim Holt's attempts to find gold in the Sierra Madres leads to paranoia, in-fighting and insanity. Based on the 1927 novel by B. Traven, Sierra Madre perfectly encapsulates the greed and self-entitlement that arose from Western expansion and the ferociousness of men willing to exploit a war-torn nation in order to get their hands on money.
"I know what gold does to men's souls." There's a cornucopia of male psychological maladies that are ripe for any given western, but none will ever be more haunting than the adoration of, and addiction to, wealth. The cycle of the prospector -- who, even if he is to strike it rich will only inevitably blow his entire fortune so that he can get back into the hunt -- ends with him dying broke and alone.
Bonnie and Clyde director Arthur Penn's seriocomic revisionist Western is one of the great films of the 1970s.
At the ripe old age of 121, Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) recalls his fantastic exploits as a young man in the Old West. Raised by the "Human Beings" (what the Cheyenne call themselves) and the paternal Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George) as "Little Big Man," Jack met some of the most infamous figures on the frontier. After being taken in by Rev. Silas Pendrake (Thayer David) and his sexy wife (Faye Dunaway), Jack is taught gunslinging by none other than Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Corey). He also miraculously survives the Battle of the Little Big Horn where George Armstrong Custer (Richard Mulligan) and his 7th Cavalry are massacred.
Jack eventually returns to the Cheyenne only to witness one final act of depravity committed against them by the white man. Little Big Man boasts fine performances, great old age makeup, and offers a biting interpretation of the Wild West and its mythology.
John Cleese as an evil Sheriff? Jeff Goldblum as a devious gambler? Kevin Costner in his most animated role ever? And a courageous alliance formed between Kevin Kline, Danny Glover and Scott Glenn in order to protect Linda Hunt from Brian Dennehy? Sold!
The Western had sort of fallen out of serious vogue in the '80s (and some might say ever since Blazing Saddles parodied the entire genre), but Lawrence Kasdan was out to Big Chill the hell out of the entire genre.
Silverado has all the benchmark Western staples -- revenge, greed, pride and love -- but audiences were dazzled by the fresh, modern movie star faces they were seeing. No Wayne. No Fonda or Eastwood. Kasdan created a, albeit thin, rollicking gun tale filled with crooked lawmen, ruthless ranchers and enough fresh action sequences to make uninitiated audiences forget that they were watching a Western. Each of the good guys (technically "outlaws") were paired up with their own personalized villains (mostly "lawmen" and "landowners") as the two factions waged war in the dustbowl town of Silverado.
This seminal 1950 Western from director Henry King stars Gregory Peck in one of his best and most influential roles. He plays reformed gunslinger Jimmy Ringo, who arrives in town hoping to visit his estranged wife and child. The brooding Ringo has tried to escape his violent past but his legendary reputation makes him a target for every young punk looking to make a name for himself.
The gist of this tragedy has been appropriated by subsequent Westerns and gangster flicks (such as Carlito's Way) about doomed protagonists who can't escape "the life."
The first movie in Sergio Leone's "Man With No Name" Trilogy,Dollars introduces us to Clint Eastwood's take on the brooding gunslinger, forging an iconic screen presence in the process. Sporting a permanent five-o'clock shadow and a never-miss aim, Eastwood rides into a town torn by war between two factions -- the Baxters and the Rojo's. The Man With No Name decides to take advantage of the conflict and play both sides of each other, in the hopes of getting rich (and not dead) in the process.
This plot would later be loosely remade in the Bruce Willis/Walter Hill collaboration Last Man Standing, but that film can't hold a candle to Leone and Eastwood's fun exploration of honor in an honorless time. No one is truly a good or bad guy here, and that's because all that matters in Fistful is who has the quickest draw and deadliest aim. Hint: It's always the guy who squints and rarely speaks.
While we still enjoyed the theatrical version, this film is famous for the director's (Sam Peckinpah) behind the scenes battle with the studio (MGM), which led to a massively edited theatrical cut -- which was largely disowned by many who worked on the film. Nearly 15 years after being taken away from him, Peckinpah released his own version of the film, which turned out to truly be superior to the original. This is the cut we choose to represent.
Pat Garrett is underlined by Peckinpah's cynical and violent sensibilities, which are also on display in The Wild Bunch, as the story follows Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, two old friends who find themselves on opposite sides of the law. Played by James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson, respectively, these two characters play out this bitter story well with the help of an excellent supporting cast -- which includes Bob Dylan in his first acting role.
"That venison is our'n," growls Donald Pleasence's sordid hillbilly, Preacher Quint, as he tries to tell Charlton Heston's towering loner,Will Penny, to git the sam hell off his land!
After the somewhat surely Penny takes in a beautiful deserted woman, Catherine, and her son Horace, the grizzled nomadic cowhand begins to realize everything that's he's been missing out on in his life. "I guess it's just a case of too soon old and too late smart," Penny realizes as he lives, for quite some time, with the two playing the surrogate husband/father role while Catherine and the boy find themselves without a guide over the Rockies.
A great character study of the "archetypical" western, rootless adventurer, Heston himself stated that Will Penny was his favorite film role among all others. And while Penny and the deranged Quint Clan might have been destined for a showdown, his love life was not so set in stone. Penny, given a taste of "what could have been," still decides, out of sheer solemn, stubborn shyness, to leave Catherine and Horace behind.
We're always freakin' game for a Bounty Hunter tale! Jimmy Stewart, in his third collaboration with director Anthony Mann, plays Howard Kemp, a man driven to apprehend the outlaw Ben Vandergroat. Spur is a visually dynamic yet ferociously tight film, that injects psychology and somewhat complex ethical theory into the genre. Stewart's bounty hunter is both heroic and nefarious. Honorable and deplorable. Confident and nervous. As the captured Vandergroat tries to turn Kemp's gang against him, Kemp himself begins to fall hard for Janet Leigh's Lina; a tomboy-ish woman who winds up representing the better, merciful side of man.
The shady hunter, the disgraced soldier, the grubbing prospector, the charismatic outlaw and the feisty spitfire come together in this amazing story of revenge, greed, love and longing. Robert Ryan was particularly palpable in this one as the villain, Vandergroat, who exhibits more charisma and appeal than the leading, bitter (anti) hero.
Robert Altman's celebrated 1971 film, one of the great Westerns of the Vietnam era, stars Warren Beatty as John McCabe, a gambler who wants to use his winnings to build a casino-brothel in the remote community of Presbyterian Church. McCabe forges a business alliance with prostitute Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie), but once their business becomes successful a mining company aims to buy McCabe out. And as anyone who has seen Westerns can tell you, mining companies (like the railroad) are never nice about getting what they want.
Although the film is an adaptation of a novel, Altman's famous improvisational style leaves one with the feeling that he and his repertory company of actors -- including Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall -- were winging it the whole time. The movie also features songs by Leonard Cohen.
In 2007, Walk the Line director James Mangold ditched the bio-pic genre for the Western and remade 1957's 3:10 to Yuma, expanding upon Elmore Leonard's novella and giving modern audiences a very successful action-movie update.
Sharing the same set-up as its predecessor, this film focuses on a crippled Civil War vet who is caught up in a posse tasked to get a local outlaw to the train station in time for the 3:10 train to Yuma -- in time for the outlaw's execution. Christian Bale plays the homesteader in desperate need of the cash this task pays out. And Russell Crowe keeps it a constant slow burn as the outlaw who promises to make it hell on those charged with his care.
Throw in a surprisingly fresh take on the third-act shootout, where the hero and the villain become put-upon allies, and 3:10 to Yumaranks up there with one of the best in its genre, and one of the most underrated films of 2007.
Gritty and bold, The Professionals assembles a crew of well-trained mercenaries on a rescue mission full of violence and peril. Paid by a wealthy rancher, this crew finds out that not all is what it seems and are forced to look within themselves to find out what they are truly fighting for. This type of story personifies the Western spirit, as it showed that a man was whatever he made himself out to be in such a lawless time.
Nominated for Academy Awards for the writing and direction by Richard Brooks, The Professionals takes a very Dirty Dozenapproach to the genre, emphasizing its more realistic take on the west, with the great cinematographer Conrad Hall on hand to accentuate the violence and vistas with effortless camerawork. Throw in a cast including Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale at their best, and fans of the genre will not be disappointed.
From the writing/directing team that brought you Rambo: First Blood Part II comes the one and only Western which has a character scream at bullets to deflect them.
No, Tombstone isn't a comedy or an unrealistic action flick. But leaning more on its massive ensemble cast and less on historical accuracy, this film sets out with the main goal of entertaining, and for the most part it succeeds. The cast clearly has fun taking liberties with their characters to help tell the story, again, of Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral. While names such as Kurt Russell, Sam Elliot, Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn and many more fill their roles well, it's Val Kilmer who steals the show. Playing an ailing Doc Holliday, Kilmer relishes every smartass comment and delivers line after line of quotable dialogue.
OK, so from a history standpoint, Clementine might be about as accurate as an eighth grader's report on President Santa Claus: The Savior of the Confederacy. Director John Ford uses Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the notorious O.K. Corral shoot 'em up as the framework for a brilliantly shadowy and rugged Western.
Earp and Holliday are portrayed as "wild west adventurer vs. sophisticated diseased defeatist" opposites, who meet up in Tombstone (a town run by the twisted grit of Holliday) and form an alliance to try and figure out who murdered Wyatt's younger brother, James. Henry Fonda and Victor Mature create some eerily memorable scenes together.
Holliday: "I know all about you and your reason for being here."
Earp: "Heard a lot about you too, Doc. You left your mark around in Deadwood, Denver and places. In fact, a man could almost follow your trail goin' from graveyard to graveyard."
Holliday: There's one herem too, biggest graveyard west of the Rockies. Marshalls and I usually get along much better when we understand that right away.
Shot in just 45 days, in the gorgeous Arizona monument valley,Clementine juxtaposes the dark recklessness of the Old West with the beauty of the landscape and the luminance of the object of Earp's affections (and Holliday's ex), Clementine Carter.
Clint Eastwood directed and stars as the title character of this 1976 film, which falls somewhere between Eastwood's earlierDollars series and his later, ultimate triumph in the genre,Unforgiven. Josey Wales, as a character, seems to balance the different aspects of the Man with No Name and William Munny, almost as if his terrible origin -- the rape and murder of his wife and family -- could've led to the Dollars films' character, but the events of this movie -- which eventually finds him leading a motley group of wanderers and friends -- might bring him to salvation, just as Munny's wife did for that Unforgiven character.
The Confederate Wales is still fighting the Civil War, even though it's over, which leads to his becoming a wanted man. While on the run, he winds up taking up with an aged Indian, an old lady and her granddaughter (played by Eastwood's partner of the era, Sondra Locke), and others. It's almost like when Batman took on Robin as a sidekick; suddenly his whole complexion changed. So does Wales' -- he's actually a human being, we realize, as well as a superhuman, bounty-hunter murdering machine. It's an interesting balance, and a subtle one, but it's there.
But the film also has its fair share of great Western action beats, as when Wales is almost captured and is forced to hand over his revolvers -- only to flip his upside-down guns around in his hands to take out his enemies in a heartbeat. Man, that one still gets us.
This may come as high praise, but Rio Bravo is one of the finest Westerns of all time and is arguably director Howard Hawks' best film.
Starring the one and only John Wayne, alongside Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Angie Dickinson, this ensemble brings all of their talents together to make the film as engaging a story as it is a movie-going experience. And yes, Rat Pack fans, Martin croons a few times for the soundtrack.
This film was made in response to Hawks and Wayne's reaction towards the classic High Noon. Feeling that the film's story wasn't done right, Rio Bravo was done to give another take on a Western where one man stands up against impossible odds. This classic is a rare breed, one the genre should be proud of.
No list of great Westerns would be complete without mentioning the works of director John Ford, who helped define the genre and directed several of its greatest masterpieces (a few of which are on this list). This beautiful, lyrical 1962 classic stars John Wayne, James Stewart, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles, and Woody Strode. A beautiful, lyrical film of immense power, Liberty Valance is a re-examination of the Western myth that Ford and Wayne's films perpetuated.
The Duke plays rancher-gunfighter Tom Doniphon, a resident of the town of Shinbone. Stewart is his friend, a transplanted and somewhat unmanly Easterner named Ransom Stoddard. Marvin plays Liberty Valance, the town bully and drunk whose death (seemingly) at the hands of Stoddard becomes the stuff of legend. The point of this film is that while legends are bogus they make for better stories than the truth; this is, after all, the movie that gave us the classic "print the legend" line.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a wonderful swan song to the Old West. If you haven't seen it then you're denying yourself one of the genre's great pleasures.
Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai gets the remake treatment, Western style, with this 1960 picture about a group of gunfighters who band together to protect a town from invading bandits (led by Eli Wallach). In the process, director John Sturges (The Great Escape) created one of the most popular and beloved films in the genre ever made.
Yul Brynner leads the Seven as Chris, who takes on the gig of protecting the Mexican farmers of the town at their urging. He puts together a group of unique characters -- and several up-and-coming stars, as it happens -- in the persons of Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, Horst Buchholz and Brad Dexter. While these players are mostly in this endeavor for the money at first, they eventually forge a bond with the villagers, so much so that even when they learn that they are unlikely to survive their encounter with the bandits they're still willing to fight.
One of the reasons the film works so well is because each of the Seven are their own individual characters; whereas the success of this movie would lead to innumerable sequels and knock-offs, those variations on the theme usually didn't get that aspect right and too often made the mistake of including cardboard cutouts in its group. Looking at the film today, The Magnificent Seven also feels like a bridge between a standard John Wayne-type oater and the revised take on the Western that would overtake the genre by the late 1960s.
As McQueen's character says at the end of the film, while paying tribute to his fallen comrades, "We lost. We always lose." That would soon become the rule, not the exception, of the genre.
Loosely based on the exploits of the two most famous members of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kidis a revisionist western of the very highest order -- a fast-paced action comedy that revels in the romance of the time.
Proceedings kick off in the Old West of Wyoming, with the two lovable outlaws robbing trains and looting banks in the most affable way imaginable. Then, following a brief (and somewhat misjudged) sojourn to New York, our heroes head to Bolivia, where the less tolerant South American government hunts them down, culminating in one of the most famous freeze frames in film history.
George Roy Hill gives the western a 1960s spin, ignoring authenticity in favour of modern-day dialogue (courtesy of screen legend William Goldman) and an easy-going Burt Bacharach soundtrack. But as the title would suggest, this is a film that's all about its stars, and Paul Newman and Robert Redford deliver two of the most playfully charismatic performances in screen history. Back in 1969 they were at the height of their Hollywood powers, and in combining their onscreen chemistry with a series of smart one-liners, the dynamic duo inadvertently invented the modern-day buddy picture.
The likes of The Man Who would Be King, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and Lethal Weapon went on to follow much the same template, but Butch and Sundance did it first, and did it best.
The final installment of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly once again sees Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name (who actually has a name, or a nickname, here -- "Blondie") making his way through the Old West landscape on a mission of personal gain, and very occasional altruism.
He is the titular Good, if only barely when compared with Lee Van Cleef's Bad and Eli Wallach's Ugly. Really, the three characters are all pretty nasty in their selfishness and single-minded devotion to finding some lost Confederate gold no matter by what means. But it's probably Wallach's character, actually, who sums up Leone's true view of the Western landscape -- it was an ugly, dirty, horrid place, full of violence and happenstance and irony.
The director's view of the gunfighter wasn't a glamorous or traditionally heroic one, unlike most of Hollywood's had been in the preceding years, but instead Leone took a wry and often humorous approach, adding grand flourishes of style and (dare we say this about Clint Eastwood?) flamboyance to his shooters.
The picture is full of iconic moments, culminating in the classic three-way, five-minute-long face-off in a graveyard where Ennio Morricone's score essentially becomes a fourth character. To quote the Ugly, "If you miss, you had better miss very well!"
For modern audiences, John Wayne has been largely reduced to a caricature, a one-note actor with a particular slow drawl and a penchant for playing the same character whether it was a cowboy, a Green Beret, or a firefighter. But for the cinema philistines who perceive Wayne in that way, a viewing of 1956's The Searchers is most definitely in order.
Teaming once again with his director John Ford, Wayne portrays Ethan Edwards, an ex-Confederate and Civil War vet whose brother's family is slaughtered during a Comanche raid -- with the exception of his niece, who is kidnapped by the marauders. Filled with a hatred of the Indians, Edwards sets out on a years-long quest to find the girl, and accompanying him is his brother's adopted son, a half-breed Indian played by Jeffrey Hunter (Captain Pike!). But as the pair's journey inches forward through the breathtaking but fearsome Monument Valley locations, Edwards' intentions are revealed to be less about saving his niece and more about putting her out of her misery, for he sees the girl as forever tainted by her association with the Comanche.
It's all quite subversive for its time, with Edwards essentially playing an antihero and a racist in a time when movies were much more straightforward, good guy/bad guy affairs. Sure, the film is dated in its way; Natalie Wood's character's eventual willingness to leave her adopted Indian home probably doesn't make sense -- Stockholm syndrome anyone? But Ford and Wayne pave the way for the new Westerns that would come decades later, with even the ostensible villain of The Searchers being not quite that. His acts of violence are the result of the White Man's murder of his own children, we learn, pointing to a cycle of violence that Edwards is all too willing to perpetuate himself.
Lots of films on this list can lay claim to having "re-invented" the western, but The Wild Bunch did more than that, taking the genre and smashing it to smithereens in a hail of bullets. Set in 1913, the story concerns a small band of outlaws who take flight to Mexico, where they face near certain death at the hands of a corrupt South American general and his guerrilla army.
Director Sam Peckinpah wasn't concerned with plot, but rather with portraying the west as truly wild. Casting his "Bunch" with the toughest of the tough -- Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson and William Holden as the leaders of this bloodthirsty bands of brothers -- he also filled the screen with violence the likes of which had never been seen before, choreographing savage slow-motion gun-fights that depict death as anything but noble.
A thinly veiled attack on the war in Vietnam, The Wild Bunch was also an antidote to the sanitized likes of The Magnificent Seventhat so irked the director. It may not be an easy watch, but this is brutal, uncompromising moviemaking that changed the genre forever.
This lyrical feature -- beautifully shot and sensitively played -- is perhaps the best version of this oft-told western tale. Alan Ladd plays the titular Shane, a lone horseman drifting from plain to plain, who one day is welcomed into the bosom of a pioneer family. Trouble is on the horizon, however, with a wealthy cattle baron terrorizing the family in an effort to drive them from what he sees as his land. As the violence escalates, it soon becomes clear that Shane has a shady past of his own, and in spite of a wish to hang up his pistols, compassion for the family forces him into battle one last time.
The wild west of Wyoming has never looked more beautiful, while Ladd is note-perfect as Shane, for in spite of his camp buck-skin suit and big bouffant hair, you're left in no doubt that this man is a killer. Jean Arthur also excels as the homestead wife whose feelings for this stranger go unspoken, while Jack Palance is on scene-stealing form as the hired gun in who Shane may have finally met his match.
A true classic of the genre, High Noon has little in the way of violence, instead concentrating on the psychological consequences of decades of gun-fights.
Gary Cooper plays Will Kane, a stoic Marshall about to leave town with his new wife in tow. However, on the eve of his departure, news reaches him that a killer he caught has been set free by abolitionists from the north, and is heading to town on the midday train with plans for revenge. Kane must therefore decide whether to renounce violence and leave -- as his Quaker-wife suggests -- or stay and fight for what he knows to be right.
Cooper has never been better as the Marshall in question, embodying everything that is good, right and moral, and he deservedly won an Oscar for his efforts. Grace Kelly also delivers a star-making turn as the loyal wife who nevertheless stands up to her husband as she endeavors to stay true to her own beliefs. And director Fred Zinnemann oversees events with masterful economy, ringing every last ounce of suspense out of the premise; in the process crafting a tense, taut masterpiece.
"I'm a writer."
"A writer? What do you write... letters an' such?"
That simple exchange of dialogue in Clint Eastwood's 1992Unforgiven quite succinctly sums up the film itself. A revisionist Western that examines the awful truth of what it was really like to live in the age of the American frontier, Unforgiven is not romanticized or action-packed, and its characters are not necessarily heroic or evil.
And despite Saul Rubinek's pulp-novelist character's best efforts to cast these gunslingers in a traditionally mythological light, Eastwood's burnt-out William Munny and the rest are, by their very nature, incapable of fitting into those pat stereotypes. The notion that someone could make a living writing books is completely foreign to these cow hustlers and tavern owners and washed-up shootists. And that's a large part of what makes the film so great.
Playing off his long history as a maker of more traditional Westerns, Eastwood (and screenwriter David Webb Peoples) casts Munny as not a master of his own destiny but rather a victim of his own tragic natural abilities -- namely, his talent at killing people. Having once been a feared and terrible gunfighter (and a drunk), Munny was eventually reformed by a woman. When we meet him, he's a struggling farmer, a father and a widower who is so desperate for cash that he agrees to take on a bounty-hunting job at the behest of a young upstart self-named The Schofield Kid. The Kid buys into the idolatry of Munny and his kind, but his perceptions of the cowboys of legend will soon be shattered -- as will his perception of himself.
Filled with amazing actors playing great characters (Gene Hackman's mean sheriff Little Bill, Richard Harris' arrogant English Bob, Morgan Freeman's even-keeled Ned Logan, and so on), beautiful cinematography, and an indelible and gentle score,Unforgiven was in many ways The End of the Western. But it also was, as subsequent forays into the genre like Deadwood and The Assassination of Jesse James illustrate, a new beginning.
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