Best Western Movies of All Time
Welcome to Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the 100 best-reviewed Western movies of all time, sorted by Adjusted Tomatometer with at least 20 reviews for each selection. Additionally, we picked only classical period films, so you get outta here with that Best Picture-winning neo-Western nonsense! Now, it’s time to put on your best pa-avenging chaps, slide a bad hombre down the saloon bar top, and ride on to see how the West was Fresh!
#100
Adjusted Score: 73.275%
Critics Consensus: A visually stunning film that may be too predictable and politically correct for adults, but should serve children well.
Synopsis: Screenwriter John Fusco returns to the Western themes of his previous films Young Guns and Thunderheart with this animated children's...
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#99
Adjusted Score: 75.38%
Critics Consensus: It's all but impossible to add anything new or fresh to the traditional Western, but -- thanks in no small part to Mads Mikkelson's performance -- The Salvation comes close.
Synopsis: The mighty Mads Mikkelsen unleashes a maelstrom of bloodshed in the Wild West in this white-knuckle tale of revenge. When...
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#98
Adjusted Score: 76.686%
Critics Consensus: Blackthorn invites comparisons to a classic Western -- and survives, thanks largely to a charismatic performance by a well-chosen Sam Shepard.
Synopsis: It's been said (but unsubstantiated) that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed in a standoff with the Bolivian...
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#97
Adjusted Score: 76.375%
Critics Consensus: The Magnificent Seven never really lives up to the superlative in its title -- or the classics from which it draws inspiration -- but remains a moderately diverting action thriller on its own merits.
Synopsis: Director Antoine Fuqua brings his modern vision to a classic story in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures' and Columbia Pictures' The Magnificent Seven....
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#96
Adjusted Score: 73.975%
Critics Consensus: While decidedly not for all tastes, Dead Man marks an alluring change of pace for writer-director Jim Jarmusch that demonstrates an assured command of challenging material.
Synopsis: Jim Jarmusch takes his quirky, uniquely modern sensibilities back in time, with this western black comedy about a city slicker...
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#95
Adjusted Score: 76.412%
Critics Consensus: With a vibrant pastel color scheme and stylized action sequences, Tears of the Black Tiger is a bizarre, yet thoroughly entertaining Thai western.
Synopsis: One of the most elaborate productions ever mounted in Thailand, Tears of the Black Tiger is a candy-colored Western made...
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#94
Adjusted Score: 76.667%
Critics Consensus: It might be a bit too eager to tug the heartstrings, but The Horse Whisperer is typically graceful, well-crafted Redford -- on both sides of the camera.
Synopsis: After her fourteen year old daughter suffers a serious horse riding accident, a high-powered magazine editor goes to Montana to...
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#93
Adjusted Score: 76.591%
Critics Consensus: Aided by its spare setting and committed performances, The Keeping Room is just fascinatingly off-kilter enough to overcome its frustrating stumbles.
Synopsis: In this radically reimagined American Western set towards the end of the Civil War, Southerner Augusta encounters two renegade, drunken...
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#92
Adjusted Score: 78.948%
Critics Consensus: In a Valley of Violence offers a smartly conceived homage to classic Westerns that transcends pastiche with absurdist humor and a terrific cast.
Synopsis: A mysterious drifter named Paul (Ethan Hawke) and his dog Abbie (Jumpy) make their way towards Mexico through the barren...
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#91
Adjusted Score: 77.971%
Critics Consensus: Boasting rich detail and well-told story, Silverado is a rare example of an '80s Hollywood Western done right.
Synopsis: Lawrence Kasdan's Silverado is a fond hark back to the all-star, big-budget westerns of the 1950s and 1960s. The various...
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#90
Adjusted Score: 79.325%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: When cowboy Lefty Brown (Bill Pullman) witnesses the murder of his longtime partner - the newly-elected Senator Edward Johnson (Peter...
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#89
Adjusted Score: 78.264%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: In this film, Jennifer Jones stars as half-breed Pearl Chavez, whom everyone has tagged as a "bad girl." She is...
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#88
Adjusted Score: 80.351%
Critics Consensus: Though its attempts to rework genre conventions may fall flat with some, Red Hill is a beautifully shot, tightly paced thriller that marks a strong debut for director Patrick Hughes.
Synopsis: Young police officer Shane Cooper relocates to the small country town of Red Hill with his pregnant wife Alice to...
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#87
Adjusted Score: 79.293%
Critics Consensus: Hostiles benefits from stunning visuals and a solid central performance from Christian Bale, both of which help elevate its uneven story.
Synopsis: Set in 1892, Hostiles tells the story of a legendary Army Captain (Christian Bale), who after stern resistance, reluctantly agrees...
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#86
Adjusted Score: 81.996%
Critics Consensus: A traditional genre western, Appaloosa sets itself apart with smart psychology, an intriguing love triangle, and good chemistry between the leads.
Synopsis: Upon drifting into a troubled Western outpost and discovering that the helpless locals are being terrorized by a ruthless rancher...
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#85
Adjusted Score: 81.739%
Critics Consensus: On the strength of its two lead performances Assassination is an expertly crafted period piece, and an insightful look at one of the enduring figures of American lore.
Synopsis: In 1881 a younger member of the notorious James gang becomes so inextricably drawn to and frightened of his mentor...
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#84
Adjusted Score: 82.751%
Critics Consensus: Back to the Future Part III draws the trilogy to a satisfying close with a simpler, sweeter round of time-travel antics.
Synopsis: The final installment in the Back to the Future trilogy picks up where the second film left off, but it...
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#83
Adjusted Score: 77.205%
Critics Consensus: If you're seeking a stylish modern western with a solid story and a well-chosen ensemble cast, Tombstone is your huckleberry.
Synopsis: A high-energy action adventure based on legend rather than historical fact finds Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) desiring to retire from...
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#82
Adjusted Score: 83.246%
Critics Consensus: Imperfect yet intriguing, The Wind offers horror fans an admirably ambitious story further distinguished by its fresh perspective and effective scares.
Synopsis: An unseen evil haunts the homestead in this chilling, folkloric tale of madness, paranoia, and otherworldly terror. Lizzy (Caitlin Gerard)...
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#81
Adjusted Score: 83.282%
Critics Consensus: Whilst never taking itself too seriously, this riotous and rollicking Sergio Leone-inspired Korean Western is serious fun.
Synopsis: As the Korean peninsula falls into the hands of Japanese imperialists and countless Koreans seek refuge in the vast wilderness...
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#80
Adjusted Score: 83.623%
Critics Consensus: Although the plot is really nothing to brag about, Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson work well together. The cinematography looks great, and Jackie delivers a hilarious performance. This is an old-fashioned crowd-pleaser.
Synopsis: The Wild West meets the Far East in a battle for honor, royalty and a trunk full of gold when...
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#79
Adjusted Score: 84.187%
Critics Consensus: Greatly benefiting from the tremendous chemistry between Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall, Open Range is a sturdy modern Western with classic roots.
Synopsis: Boss Spearman, Charley Waite, Mose Harrison and Button freegraze their cattle across the vast prairies of the West, sharing a...
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#78
Adjusted Score: 84.091%
Critics Consensus: By turns intoxicating and confounding, El Topo contains the creative multitudes that made writer-director Alejandro Jodorowsky such a singular talent.
Synopsis: A bizarre, ultra-violent, allegorical Western, "El Topo" is set in two halves that have widely been compared to the Old...
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#77
Adjusted Score: 84.505%
Critics Consensus: With its pared down storytelling, The Long Riders delivers with an evocative atmosphere and artful brutality.
Synopsis: The hook in Walter Hill's mythic retelling of the James-Younger outlaw legend is in the casting; the James, Younger, Miller,...
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#76
Adjusted Score: 85.768%
Critics Consensus: Its unusual approach won't be for all viewers, but True History of the Kelly Gang takes a distinctively postmodern look at Australia's past.
Synopsis: Set against the badlands of colonial Australia where the English rule with a bloody fist and the Irish endure, Ned...
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#75
Adjusted Score: 85.854%
Critics Consensus: A Western that swaps out the Hollywood glamor for shades of moral gray, Hud is a sobering showcase for a sterling ensemble of actors at the top of their respective games.
Synopsis: On a Texas ranch an unruly man is bitter enemies with his elderly father, assaults and abuses the woman housekeeper,...
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#74
Adjusted Score: 85.854%
Critics Consensus: A squarely traditional yet somewhat progressive Western, The Homesman adds another absorbing entry to Tommy Lee Jones' directorial résumé.
Synopsis: When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task...
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#73
Adjusted Score: 87.445%
Critics Consensus: Sam Peckinpah tips his hat in mournful salute to the bygone West in this somber showdown, pitting a James Coburn against Kris Kristofferson in a meditative game of cat and mouse.
Synopsis: A former friend betrays a legendary outlaw in Sam Peckinpah's final Western. Holed up in Fort Sumner with his gang...
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#72
Adjusted Score: 87.196%
Critics Consensus: The Hateful Eight offers another well-aimed round from Quentin Tarantino's signature blend of action, humor, and over-the-top violence -- all while demonstrating an even stronger grip on his filmmaking craft.
Synopsis: Set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The...
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#71
Adjusted Score: 87.924%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Filmed in panoramic Cinerama, this star-studded, epic Western adventure is a true cinematic classic. Three legendary directors (Henry Hathaway, John...
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#70
Adjusted Score: 88.335%
Critics Consensus: Dances with Wolves suffers from a simplistic view of the culture it attempts to honor, but the end result remains a stirring western whose noble intentions are often matched by its epic grandeur.
Synopsis: A historical drama about the relationship between a Civil War soldier and a band of Sioux Indians, Kevin Costner's directorial...
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#69
Adjusted Score: 89.656%
Critics Consensus: Moving at a contemplative speed unseen in most westerns, Meek's Cutoff is an effective, intense journey of terror and survival in the untamed frontier.
Synopsis: The year is 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, and a wagon train of three families has hired...
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#68
Adjusted Score: 89.822%
Critics Consensus: Tommy Lee Jones' directorial debut is both a potent western and a powerful morality tale.
Synopsis: A man is shot and quickly buried in the high desert of west Texas. The body is found and reburied...
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#67
Adjusted Score: 88.973%
Critics Consensus: Brutal, unflinching, and violent, but thought-provoking and with excellent performances, this Australian western is the one of the best examples of the genre to come along in recent times.
Synopsis: An outlaw is goaded into taking on justice at its most brutal in this hard-edged Western set in rural Australia...
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#66
Adjusted Score: 92.667%
Critics Consensus: With a supremely talented cast and just enough midlife drama to add weight to its wildly silly overtones, City Slickers uses universal themes to earn big laughs.
Synopsis: City Slickers blends sight gags, one-liners, and sincerity, with both humor and drama arising from the characters and their situations....
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#65
Adjusted Score: 87.654%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Debauchery. Greed. Murder. Welcome to Garlow. The once-peaceful frontier town is now a den of vice after vicious outlaw Dutch...
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#64
Adjusted Score: 89.308%
Critics Consensus: Yul Brynner gives a memorable performance as a robotic cowboy in this amusing sci-fi/western hybrid.
Synopsis: Welcome to Westworld, where nothing can go wrong...go wrong...go wrong....Writer/director Michael Crichton has concocted a futuristic "Disneyland for adults", a...
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#63
Adjusted Score: 87.695%
Critics Consensus: Simple in story while sophisticated in texture, The Shootist is a fittingly elegiac swan song for one of Hollywood's most iconic stars.
Synopsis: About ten minutes into The Shootist, Doctor Hostetler (James Stewart) tells aging Western gunfighter John Bernard Books (John Wayne), "You...
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#62
Adjusted Score: 91.711%
Critics Consensus: Near Dark is at once a creepy vampire film, a thrilling western, and a poignant family tale, with humor and scares in abundance.
Synopsis: A roving band of contemporary vampires travel across the American West in search of the human blood they crave in...
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#61
Adjusted Score: 90.754%
Critics Consensus: McCabe & Mrs. Miller offers revisionist Western fans a landmark early addition to the genre while marking an early apogee for director Robert Altman.
Synopsis: In a small American frontier village, a stranger named McCabe builds a brothel with the help of experienced madame Mrs....
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#60
Adjusted Score: 92.554%
Critics Consensus: Mystery Road evokes classic Westerns while using its Australian outback setting to delve into a surprisingly layered -- and powerfully impactful -- array of social issues.
Synopsis: An Indigenous detective investigates the murder of a teenage girl in a small town in the Outback. Ivan Sen (Toomelah)...
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#59
Adjusted Score: 94.264%
Critics Consensus: The Magnificent Seven transplants Seven Samurai into the Old West with a terrific cast of Hollywood stars -- and without losing any of the story's thematic richness.
Synopsis: A Mexican village is being terrorized by the bandit Calvera (Eli Wallach) and his gun blazing goons. Seven American mercenaries...
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#58
Adjusted Score: 93.9%
Critics Consensus: As starkly beautiful as it is harshly uncompromising, The Revenant uses Leonardo DiCaprio's committed performance as fuel for an absorbing drama that offers punishing challenges -- and rich rewards.
Synopsis: Inspired by true events, THE REVENANT is an immersive and visceral cinematic experience capturing one man's epic adventure of survival...
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#57
Adjusted Score: 94.479%
Critics Consensus: Duck, You Sucker is a saucy helping of spaghetti western, with James Coburn and Rod Steiger's chemistry igniting the screen and Sergio Leone's bravura style on full display.
Synopsis: Originally titled Giù la Testa, Duck, You Sucker! is a Mexican-revolution yarn, filmed in Italy by spaghetti Western maven Sergio...
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#56
Adjusted Score: 94.014%
Critics Consensus: Bone Tomahawk's peculiar genre blend won't be for everyone, but its gripping performances and a slow-burning story should satisfy those in search of something different.
Synopsis: When a group of cannibal savages kidnaps settlers from the small town of Bright Hope, an unlikely team of gunslingers,...
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#55
Adjusted Score: 94.023%
Critics Consensus: Recreating the essence of his iconic Man With No Name in a post-Civil War Western, director Clint Eastwood delivered the first of his great revisionist works of the genre.
Synopsis: Clint Eastwood's fifth film as a director and eighth Western as a star (ninth if you count Paint Your Wagon),...
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#54
Adjusted Score: 94.889%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: This fact-based western stars Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan as drifters who attempt to stop a lynching of three men...
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#53
Adjusted Score: 94.359%
Critics Consensus: Nearly a decade after The Outlaw Josey Wales, Clint Eastwood returns as a director to the genre that made his name with this elegant, spiritual Western that riffs on the classic Shane.
Synopsis: Director Clint Eastwood draws on his experience to put together a western with winning components: the bad guys are corporate...
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#52
Adjusted Score: 95.56%
Critics Consensus: True Grit rides along on the strength of a lived-in late-period John Wayne performance, adding its own entertaining spin to the oft-adapted source material.
Synopsis: In fine Hollywood tradition, John Wayne had to play a "one-eyed fat man" before the Motion Picture Academy considered him...
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#51
Adjusted Score: 94.651%
Critics Consensus: Made on a shoestring budget, El Mariachi's story is not new. However, the movie has so much energy that it's thoroughly enjoyable.
Synopsis: Filmed in two weeks on a budget of 7,000 dollars, El Mariachi was one of the singular pleasures of the...
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#50
Adjusted Score: 90.788%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: This western spoof tells the story of a tough schoolmarm who becomes a gunslinger to avenge the death of her...
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#49
Adjusted Score: 94.952%
Critics Consensus: Rango is a smart, giddily creative burst of beautifully animated entertainment, and Johnny Depp gives a colorful vocal performance as a household pet in an unfamiliar world.
Synopsis: Rango is a sheltered chameleon living as an ordinary family pet, while facing a major identity crisis. After all, how...
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#48
Adjusted Score: 96.245%
Critics Consensus: With Clint Eastwood in the lead, Ennio Morricone on the score, and Sergio Leone's stylish direction, For a Few Dollars More earns its recognition as a genre classic.
Synopsis: This pulse-pounding follow-up to Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars brings back Clint Eastwood as the serape-clad, cigar-chewing "Man With...
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#47
Adjusted Score: 94.482%
Critics Consensus: Daring, provocative, and laugh-out-loud funny, Blazing Saddles is a gleefully vulgar spoof of Westerns that marks a high point in Mel Brooks' storied career.
Synopsis: Vulgar, crude, and occasionally scandalous in its racial humor, this hilarious bad-taste spoof of Westerns, co-written by Richard Pryor, features...
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#46
Adjusted Score: 95.508%
Critics Consensus: The Sisters Brothers rides familiar genre trails in occasionally unexpected ways - a satisfying journey further elevated by its well-matched leading men.
Synopsis: From acclaimed director Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone, A Prophet), and based on the novel by Patrick deWitt, THE SISTERS...
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#45
Adjusted Score: 96.167%
Critics Consensus: Smart and absorbing, Lone Star represents a career high point for writer-director John Sayles -- and '90s independent cinema in general.
Synopsis: A small town Texas sheriff who is living in the shadow of his legendary father prods an investigation no one...
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#44
Adjusted Score: 96.275%
Critics Consensus: With its iconic pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, jaunty screenplay and Burt Bacharach score, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has gone down as among the defining moments in late-'60s American cinema.
Synopsis: Opening with a silent "movie" of Butch Cassidy's Hole in the Wall Gang, George Roy Hill's comically elegiac Western chronicles...
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#43
Adjusted Score: 96.539%
Critics Consensus: This remake of a classic Western improves on the original, thanks to fiery performances from Russell Crowe and Christian Bale as well as sharp direction from James Mangold.
Synopsis: Russell Crowe plays a desperado whose accomplices stage an ambush after he is taken into custody by a determined local...
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#42
Adjusted Score: 96.662%
Critics Consensus: Slow West serves as an impressive calling card for first-time writer-director John M. Maclean -- and offers an inventive treat for fans of the Western.
Synopsis: At the end of the nineteenth century, 16-year-old Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) journeys across the American frontier in search of...
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#41
Adjusted Score: 94.723%
Critics Consensus: Bisbee '17 offers one town's reckoning with its own history as a compelling argument that the mistakes of the past are truly corrected only when they're faced head on.
Synopsis: An old mining town on the Arizona-Mexico border finally reckons with its darkest day: the deportation of 1200 immigrant miners...
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Starring:
#40
Adjusted Score: 96.899%
Critics Consensus: Jeremiah Johnson's deliberate pace demands an investment from the viewer, but it's rewarded with a thoughtful drama anchored by a starring performance from Robert Redford.
Synopsis: Years before Kevin Costner danced with wolves, Robert Redford headed to the mountains to escape civilization in Sydney Pollack's wilderness...
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#39
Adjusted Score: 98.672%
Critics Consensus: Formally thrilling and narratively daring, Bacurau draws on modern Brazilian sociopolitical concerns to deliver a hard-hitting, genre-blurring drama.
Synopsis: A few years from now... Bacurau, a small village in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita,...
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#38
Adjusted Score: 98.682%
Critics Consensus: Featuring a trio of classic leading men and a rich story captured by a director at the peak of his craft, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of the finest Westerns ever filmed.
Synopsis: Eastern attorney Ranson Stoddard (James Stewart) heads to the wild West in search of a new life. He settles in...
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#37
Adjusted Score: 98.153%
Critics Consensus: Bold, bloody, and stylistically daring, Django Unchained is another incendiary masterpiece from Quentin Tarantino.
Synopsis: Set in the South two years before the Civil War, Django Unchained stars Jamie Foxx as Django, a slave whose...
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#36
Adjusted Score: 97.605%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: The second of John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy," this film stars John Wayne as Cavalry Captain Nathan Brittles. In his last...
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#35
Adjusted Score: 97.986%
Critics Consensus: Johnny Guitar confidently strides through genre conventions, emerging with a brilliant statement that transcends its period setting -- and left an indelible mark.
Synopsis: Strong-willed saloon-casino owner Vienna squares off against her nemesis, the shrieking Emma Small, who wrongly blames Vienna for her brother's...
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#34
Adjusted Score: 95.26%
Critics Consensus: Clint Eastwood's sophomore outing as director sees him back in the saddle as a mysterious stranger, as the result is one of his most memorable Westerns.
Synopsis: "Who are you?" the dwarf Mordecai (Billy Curtis) asks Clint Eastwood's Stranger at the end of Eastwood's 1973 western High...
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#33
Adjusted Score: 98.426%
Critics Consensus: Wind River lures viewers into a character-driven mystery with smart writing, a strong cast, and a skillfully rendered setting that delivers the bitter chill promised by its title.
Synopsis: WIND RIVER is a chilling thriller that follows a rookie FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) who teams up with a local...
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#32
Adjusted Score: 98.356%
Critics Consensus: At once tender and unsentimental, Sweetgrass gracefully captures the beauty and hardships of a dying way of life.
Synopsis: Filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor continue their work capturing the stark beauty and danger of the Western landscape with...
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#31
Adjusted Score: 98.739%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Tom Destry (James Stewart), son of a legendary frontier peacekeeper, doesn't believe in gunplay. Thus he becomes the object of...
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#30
Adjusted Score: 98.683%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Adapted from the novel by Thomas Berger, Little Big Man opens with the spoken reminiscences of 121-year-old Jack Crabbe (Dustin...
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#29
Adjusted Score: 99.292%
Critics Consensus: Sweet Country makes brilliant use of the Australian outback as the setting for a hard-hitting story that satisfies as a character study as well as a sociopolitical statement.
Synopsis: Sam, a middle-aged Aboriginal man, works for a preacher in the outback of Australia's Northern Territory. When Harry, a bitter...
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#28
Adjusted Score: 99.391%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Desperate for money, frontier rancher Van Heflin holds outlaw Glenn Ford at gunpoint, intending to collect the $200 reward. While...
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#27
Adjusted Score: 99.7%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Arthur Miller scripted this tale of a recently divorced, one-time stripper (Marilyn Monroe) who begins a relationship with a down-on-his-luck...
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#26
Adjusted Score: 97.987%
Critics Consensus: The Wild Bunch is Sam Peckinpah's shocking, violent ballad to an old world and a dying genre.
Synopsis: Sam Peckinpah's controversial revisionist Western takes place in Texas and Mexico in 1913, a transitional year when the Old West...
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#25
Adjusted Score: 98.616%
Critics Consensus: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs avoids anthology pitfalls with a consistent collection tied together by the Coen brothers' signature blend of dark drama and black humor.
Synopsis: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a six-part Western anthology film, a series of tales about the American frontier told...
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#24
Adjusted Score: 100.513%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: This powerfully tense, fast-paced suspense drama also yields a grim social message about racial prejudice. Spencer Tracy is John J....
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#23
Adjusted Score: 98.775%
Critics Consensus: Giant earns its imposing name with a towering narrative supported by striking cinematography, big ideas, and powerful work from a trio of legendary Hollywood leads.
Synopsis: George Stevens' sprawling adaptation of Edna Ferber's best-selling novel successfully walks a fine line between potboiler and serious drama for...
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#22
Adjusted Score: 100.953%
Critics Consensus: Major Dundee is a Western-type with big war scenes, shot with bombast typical of Sam Peckinpah.
Synopsis: Sam Peckinpah's 1965 feature Major Dundee was recut and rescored for re-release theatrically in 2005, 40 years after its original...
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#21
Adjusted Score: 101.492%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Director Monte Hellman used his beloved "hunter as hunted" theme for his near-existential western The Shooting. Jack Nicholson and Warren...
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#20
Adjusted Score: 101.581%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: The story of a Wyoming range war is elevated to near-mythical status in George Stevens' Western classic Shane. Alan Ladd...
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#19
Adjusted Score: 101.568%
Critics Consensus: A landmark Sergio Leone spaghetti western masterpiece featuring a classic Morricone score.
Synopsis: In Sergio Leone's epic Western, shot partly in Monument Valley, a revenge story becomes an epic contemplation of the Western...
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#18
Adjusted Score: 101.742%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Having struck pay dirt with his 1958 western Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks more or less remade the picture twice in...
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#17
Adjusted Score: 102.293%
Critics Consensus: Old Yeller is an exemplary coming of age tale, packing an emotional wallop through smart pacing and a keen understanding of the elemental bonding between humanity and their furry best friends.
Synopsis: While his father is away on a cattle drive, 15-year-old Tommy Kirk manages the family farm. Kirk is irritated when...
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#16
Adjusted Score: 102.489%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: The soldiers at Fort Apache may disagree with the tactics of their glory-seeking new commander. But to a man, they're...
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#15
Adjusted Score: 104.4%
Critics Consensus: The Rider's hard-hitting drama is only made more effective through writer-director Chloé Zhao's use of untrained actors to tell the movie's fact-based tale.
Synopsis: Based on his a true story, THE RIDER stars breakout Brady Jandreau as a once rising star of the rodeo...
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#14
Adjusted Score: 102.703%
Critics Consensus: With Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo as his template, Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars helped define a new era for the Western and usher in its most iconic star, Clint Eastwood.
Synopsis: By the time Sergio Leone made this film, Italians had already produced about 20 films ironically labelled "spaghetti westerns." Leone...
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#13
Adjusted Score: 103.028%
Critics Consensus: Bolstered by powerful lead performances from Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, and Tommy Lee Jones, No Country for Old Men finds the Coen brothers spinning cinematic gold out of Cormac McCarthy's grim, darkly funny novel.
Synopsis: When a Vietnam veteran discovers two million dollars while wandering through the aftermath of a Texas drug deal gone horribly...
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#12
Adjusted Score: 103.386%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Several Hollywood insiders felt that Jimmy Stewart had overestimated his box office appeal when he agreed to appear in Winchester...
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#11
Adjusted Score: 103.819%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Director Howard Hawks' second western was also his first collaboration with John Wayne. Officially based on Borden Chase's novel The...
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#10
Adjusted Score: 104.076%
Critics Consensus: The Searchers is an epic John Wayne Western that introduces dark ambivalence to the genre that remains fashionable today.
Synopsis: If John Ford is the greatest Western director, The Searchers is arguably his greatest film, at once a grand outdoor...
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#9
Adjusted Score: 103.818%
Critics Consensus: Canny and coolly confident, My Darling Clementine is a definitive dramatization of the Wyatt Earp legend that shoots from the hip and hits its target in breezy style.
Synopsis: John Ford's western takes its inspiration from the life and legend of Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda), the frontier lawman who...
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#8
Adjusted Score: 104.183%
Critics Consensus: As both director and star, Clint Eastwood strips away decades of Hollywood varnish applied to the Wild West, and emerges with a series of harshly eloquent statements about the nature of violence.
Synopsis: Dedicated to his mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, Clint Eastwood's 1992 Oscar-winner examines the mythic violence of the Western,...
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#7
Adjusted Score: 103.472%
Critics Consensus: Girded by strong performances from Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, and lifted by some of the Coens' most finely tuned, unaffected work, True Grit is a worthy companion to the Charles Portis book.
Synopsis: Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) joins an aging U.S. marshal (Jeff Bridges) and another lawman (Matt Damon) in tracking her...
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#6
Adjusted Score: 108.007%
Critics Consensus: Hell or High Water offers a solidly crafted, well-acted Western heist thriller that eschews mindless gunplay in favor of confident pacing and full-bodied characters.
Synopsis: Texas brothers--Toby (Chris Pine), and Tanner (Ben Foster), come together after years divided to rob branches of the bank threatening...
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#5
Adjusted Score: 104.781%
Critics Consensus: Rio Bravo finds director Howard Hawks -- and his stellar ensemble cast -- working at peak performance, and the end result is a towering classic of the Western genre.
Synopsis: Set in Texas during the late 1860s, Rio Bravo is a story of men (and women) and a town under...
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#4
Adjusted Score: 105.73%
Critics Consensus: Typifying the best that the Western genre has to offer, Stagecoach is a rip-roaring adventure given dramatic heft by John Ford's dynamic direction and John Wayne's mesmerizing star turn.
Synopsis: Although there were Westerns before it, Stagecoach quickly became a template for all movie Westerns to come. Director John Ford...
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#3
Adjusted Score: 107.171%
Critics Consensus: A classic of the Western genre that broke with many of the traditions at the time, High Noon endures -- in no small part thanks to Gary Cooper's defiant, Oscar-winning performance.
Synopsis: In this classic western, a marshal prepares to retire from law enforcement because of his marriage to a Quaker. But...
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#2
Adjusted Score: 107.308%
Critics Consensus: Remade but never duplicated, this darkly humorous morality tale represents John Huston at his finest.
Synopsis: John Huston's 1948 treasure-hunt classic begins as drifter Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), down and out in Tampico, Mexico, impulsively...
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#1
Adjusted Score: 106.572%
Critics Consensus: Arguably the greatest of the spaghetti westerns, this epic features a compelling story, memorable performances, breathtaking landscapes, and a haunting score.
Synopsis: In the last and the best installment of his so-called "Dollars" trilogy of Sergio Leone-directed "spaghetti westerns," Clint Eastwood reprised...
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