My “credentials as a critic of western movies is pretty
shallow, but confident. I have really firm convictions about what makes a great
western story, novel, movie, or series. I did grow up in Dodge City, Kansas and
like a lot of boys from my generation I played with toy guns and pretended to
be a badass gunfighter for hours every weekend and all summer. My father’s
older brother owned a real ranch with a few thousand head of cattle and dozens
of working quarter horses. His sons were real cowboys and one imagines he still
is, although he’s 80-some-years-old and probably hasn’t sat on a horse for at
least 20 years. I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of my early years on my
uncle’s ranch, riding horses, digging fence line postholes (I still like to dig
postholes), hunting squirrels and rabbits, fishing Bluff Creek, and exploring
the unused or barely used parts of his ranch property. Eastern Kansas has some
decent western history, too, which added to my database of actual western
history.
When I was a kid, 12-14, I worked a couple of summers at
the Dodge City Boot Hill Museum. My jobs there were everything from concession stand operator to janitor
to reenactment actor to non-alcoholic beverage bartender. At least one summer, I did all four jobs consecutively. My
three favorite activities while “working” at the museum were 1) dueling with
the fast draw automated gunfighter, 2) pawing through the actual gunfighter gun
collection and western memorabilia stored in the Front Street museum basement,
and reading the stacks of Dodge City newspapers from the 1800’s stored in the
basement and on racks in the Boot Hill Museum. I came away from those experiences
with a completely different picture of life in the “West” (of which the
Midwestern Kansas barely qualifies). That picture informs, defines, and biases
my opinion of western stories.
I have read a LOT of western novels, biographies, and
history. For years, my oldest daughter, Holly, has bought me reference books for birthdays, Xmas, and
general inspiration. I even have a couple of western-based novels in stasis,
since my writing appears to have stalled out in old age. I have a super-fast
way to determine if a western is going to be tolerable. I use this for writers
I have not previously read. I skip to the last pages of the novel and look for
shit like “she melted into his arms” or other romantic bullshit. If that crap
is there, I toss the book back on the shelf. I am not a Louie L’Amour
predictable W-shaped plot line fan. I don’t read “romances for men,” which is
what that genre of novel amounts to. I don’t do John Wayne (except for one) or
Ronny Reagan crap, either. Those two poofs needed a crew to hoist them on to
their horses and, then, they needed a quart of Gorilla Glue on the saddle to
stay there.
The order in which these movies and television
mini-series appear in my list is not really sorted by “the best” motivation.
For sure, whatever movie ended up at #1 is NOT my all-time favorite western. I
don’t really have such an animal in my collection. To be sure, the stuff near
the top of the list is more favored than the stuff at the bottom, but I like
all of these movies a lot. If I didn’t like them, they wouldn’t be on the list
at all.
My List of Best Westerns (not the motels)
1.
Hombre
One of Paul
Newman’s “H movies,” 1967’s Hombre is
based on an Elmore Leonard novelette of the same name, which is a great origin
story for any movie. I like or love almost every Elmore Leonard story ever
turned into a movie. There was one fatal (in my opinion) character flaw in the
novelette and the movie version “fixed” that. Newman and Richard Boone play
together well and this early anti-hero story is gritty, realistic, and as
western as the west ever was. Any best western list that doesn’t include Hombre is bullshit.
Hombre sits at the top
of my list because it was the movie that convinced me westerns didn’t have to
be crap romances for city boys and losers. It was also one of the few movies
made from a book that improved on the book without losing a step. Irving Ravetch
and Harriet Frank Jr’s screen play of an Elmore Leonard novelette changed the
one weak character in Leonard’s story to be a more credible, stronger female
lead played by Diane Cilento. The original “Jesse” was a teenager who mostly whined
throughout Leonard’s story.
2.
Justified
Justified is my all-time favorite television series . . . EVER.
This is another Elmore Leonard-based story (“Fire in the Hole” is one of
Leonard’s Marshall Givens stories) and Mr. Leonard was a co-producer of the
series until he died just before the start of the final season. Timothy
Oliphant flew to the head of my “favorite actor” category for his portrayal of
Marshall Raylan Givens. Givens’ cowboy hat, his fascination with old west
lawmen, his attitude, and his gunfighter skills are what make this a “western”
for me. It is a modern story, but everything about it screams those
libertarian, every-man-for-himself, lawless days of the Old West.
There are hundreds of moments in this 6
season series (2010-2015) that sucked me in, but in the first season there is a
scene where Givens confronts a pair of mobsters on an isolated highway and
tells them, “That’s close enough. If you take another step, I’ll have to put
you down.” The alpha mobster takes another step and Givens puts a bullet in his
gut. I have spent most of my life screaming at movies where the idiot with a
gun keeps saying “don’t take another step or I’ll shoot” until the moron gets
beat down after the other guy has practically done his daily 10,000 steps in
the process. Justified never does
that kind of dumb shit.
I had, literally, no expectations for
this 2017 Scott Cooper production, since it wasn’t advertised and just showed
up at my local theater with minimal fanfare. We went with a couple of friends
who were totally unfamiliar with western and, to the movie’s credit, they were
lost through large sections of the movie. Christian Bale heads the cast, but
the rest of the cast—Rosamund
Pike, Wes
Studi, Ben
Foster, Stephen Lang, Jesse
Plemons, Rory Cochrane, Adam Beach,
Q'orianka Kilcher, and Jonathan
Majors—were brilliantly selected for their parts and the screenplay is a
masterpiece.
You cannot daydream for a moment or Hostiles will leave you wondering “what
just happened?” Cooper does not lead you by the hand with either his dialog or
the action. Blink or daydream for a moment and you’ll wake up confused. This is
an actual adult’s movie.
4.
True Grit
The 2010 Cohen Brothers’ True Grit, not the ridiculous 1969 John Wayne mess. As anyone who
has followed the Cohen Brothers’ careers might expect, their version of the 1968
Charles Portis novel doesn’t mess around with pretending that screenwriters are
more competent than novelists. They made a movie out of the book and picked all
of the right people for the parts. There are no nods to popularity in this
cast, every part is played by someone who is perfect for the job.
5.
Appaloosa
Practically no one’s list of best westerns contains
Appaloosa and that might be one of the reasons I decided to create my own. Ed
Harris and Vigo Mortenson bring Robert Parker’s novel to life as well as any
transition from book to movie has ever been done. Randall Bragg (Jeremy
Irons) is one of Hollywood’s best ever evil bastards and of all the irritating
people Renée Zellweger has portrayed, Allison French, is high
on my list. Lots of realism, lots of action, and I wish they’d have done well
enough that Harris and Mortenson had kept making Parker’s stories into movies.
6.
Lonesome Dove
I know, Lonesome Dove is not a
movie, it’s a mini-series. Larry McMurtry never wrote a sentence that I didn’t
love and every paragraph in his 843 page novel was a masterpiece. This 1989 TNT
series about ex-Texas Rangers (Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones) driving
cattle into the Montana Territory through rustlers, hostile Indians, lousy
weather, and bad luck is an indispensable part of any western movie film
collection. I had no idea that Tommy Lee Jones was a versatile actor until Lonesome Dove.
7.
Hell on Wheels
Another series, but one of the best ever. There are too
many wonderful, believable characters in this 5 season, 57 episode drama to
describe in less than several thousand words, but Anson Mount’s Cullen
Bohannon should have earned him a long and successful career as a leading man. The
first season was supposed to be the only season and it is incredibly powerful.
The producer’s decision to have each season be the “property” of a different
director kept the series from devolving into the usual plotless crap that
plagues most television series.
8.
Hidalgo
Vigo Mortensen is a down-on-his-luck American cowboy who
takes a flyer on an Arabian cross country horse race to change his luck. The
west meets a spectacularly corrupt monarchy in the desert. Everything about
this 2004 movie is terrific and lots of it is even unpredictable, not the usual
situation for westerns. Mortensen is perfect, but what else would you expect?
9.
The Proposition
Nick Cave first wrote the soundtrack, then was handed the
screenplay for this Australian-based western which he supposedly wrote in three
weeks. He knocked it out of the park on all counts. There are moments in this
movie where you can’t separate the action from the soundtrack, they blend so
perfectly.
Guy Pierce out-Eastwoods Clint Eastwood at this best as
the main character, Charles Burns, the brother of notorious outlaw Arthur Burns
(Danny Huston), the man every lawman in Australia wants to take down. The
cinematography is non-stop incredible because somehow this film manages to
remove all signs of the 20th Century. I would have bet that The Proposition, released in 2005, would
have made Guy Pierce a superstar. I still don’t know what happened.
10.
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy’s 1992 book turned into an equally brutal
2000 movie. Billy Bob Thornton directed it and Matt Damon knocked the lead out
of the park.
11.
The Sisters Brothers
The Sisters Brothers is a terrific novel and the movie
tracked the novel pretty well, with the usual shortening or elimination of
backstories and sidelines to fit into the 2 hour time line.
Eastwood’s 1992 Unforgiven is, rightfully on everyone’s
“best western” list. It is so good that it almost makes up for that godawful
pile of spaghetti western crap he made in the 70’s and the worse-than-crap Rawhide 60’s television series.
13.
The Homesman
This is one weird part for Tommy Lee Jones and it is a
hard look at the brutal lives of women on the western frontier in the 1850s.
Another gritty piece of realism that takes all of the romance out of those
western myths.
14.
The Ballad of Lefty Brown
Bill Pullman is just amazing as the sidekick of a western
hero, played momentarily by Peter Fonda, who was gunned down mysteriously
leaving Brown with the guilt and blame. Lefty’s shift from sidekick to hero
takes the whole film to develop and it’s worth every moment.
15.
Monte Walsh
With
Lee Marvin and Jack Palance, this was one of the best westerns I’d seen (or
imagined) in 1970. Yeah, Lee and Jack
were a little old to be cowboys, but casting wasn’t exactly an art in the first
50 years of moving making. If you doubt my opinion, check out the hefty cavalry
troopers in the same movie. Monty Walsh
was a great novel, by Jack Schaefer and, I think the first version of Monty Walsh was the best. I didn’t hate
the Tom Selleck remake, I just didn’t think it was worth doing.
16.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
I have no idea why reviewers often call Robert Altman’s 1971 movie “western revisionist,” it was a masterpiece
in a genre that mostly produced white mythology pap and racist bullshit before
the anti-hero period of the late-60s and early 70s. Altman’s mining town is a
gritty, amoral, and corrupt as most of the libertarian late-1800s actually was
and if that look at reality is “revisionist” that word needs redefining.
17.
Ulzana’s Raid
Burt Lancaster is terrific in this
Robert Aldrich movie as is the rest of the cast. There is a lot of gritty
realism here, especially considering its 1972 production date. It is definitely
not a western romance.
This is absolutely a classic western
with almost none of the traditional qualities of westerns. Robert Altman’s 1971 anti-hero story that starred Warren Beatty
and Julie Christie is one of the grittiest, least romantic westerns ever
created.
18.
The Assassination of Jesse James
19.
The Shootist
I am not a John Wayne fan, but for his last western and
last movie this was a good exit. Glendon Swarthout's 1975 novel was the basis
for The Shootist and his son, Miles
Hood Swarthout, and Scott Hale didn’t screw it up. Unlike every other western
Wayne was in, The Shootist holds up
well after 50 years. For one, Wayne’s character is dying of prostate cancer and
rides as if his butt hurts, which is how Wayne always looked on a horse.
20.
3:10 to Yuma
Another Elmore Leonard novel turned into a movie. As a
lifelong Leonard fan, the closer the movie is to the book the more I’ll like
it. Therefore, my favorite movie version is no contest, the 2007 version is
hands-down the better of the two. Glenn Ford was very good in the 1957 attempt,
but his character was rewritten too much to even resemble Leonard’s Dan Evans. Christian
Bale nailed it as did the James Mangold direction and Halsted Wells screenplay.
In his prime, Russell Crowe was an amazing western American bad guy.
21.
The Revenant
22.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
23.
Bone Tomahawk
24.
Dances with Wolves
25.
Open Range
Believe or not, I am sort of a Costner fan, just not so
much as an actor than as a person. Costner was pretty good in 2003’s Open Range and stoically offsetting
Robert Duval’s outgoing character Costner seemed less wooden and more
self-contained. Open Range is a fun,
fairly traditional wester.
26.
Blackthorn
Sam Shepard is an old Butch Cassidy living in Bolivia in
1908 as James Blackthorn. How could that premise go wrong? It
didn’t. This is one convoluted, freaky plotline and worth every second of the screenplay.
Sam Shepard is my John Wayne.
27.
Blazing Saddles
Just in case you are silly enough to take my opinions
more or less seriously than any other “fan” of anything, Blazing Saddles is solidly on my list. Clevon Little is one of my
all-time favorite actors and he totally carried this movie on his comedic
shoulders. Without Clevon Little, we might barely know who Mel Brooks was.
28.
The Hateful Eight
This story is somewhere between a gritty and realistic
western shoot-out film and a typical Tarantino bloodbath. It is packed full of
terrific actors and slightly better than B-movie performances and dialog. I
should like it more than I do and I’m not sure why it falls this low on my
list, but I don’t see anything up there that I would move it above.
29.
The Good Lord Bird
30.
The Streets of Laredo
Another mini-series, but with James
Garner, Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard, and Ned Beatty in the cast and direction by
Joseph Sargent it might as well be considered to be a major film. I am not a
fan of James Garner, but he knocked this part out of the park. Since he was
playing an older version of Tommy Lee Jones’ Woodrow Call, he had to do some
serious work to be credible. He did just that.
Deadwood: The Movie and the series should be higher on my
list. I like a lot of the actors, the writing isn’t bad, the costumes and sets
are excellent, and . . . I loved Pete Dexter’s book, Deadwood, which David Milch almost
ripped page-by-page from in the first season. I can’t get past that when I
watch any episode of Deadwood. In the west, Dexter would rightfully gun down
Milch in the first scene of a decent western.
As for the series and the movie, the
dialog was forced, overwrought, and rarely clever. The goober who did the sound
editing clearly never heard of EQ or clarity. Great scenery and Tim Oliphant
was terrific even when he wasn’t given much to work with. Visually, Deadwood is pretty good, but that’s it.
32.
Comanche Moon
33.
Jonah Hex
34.
Cowboys and Aliens
I know, I should
get a ton of crap for putting this movie in a western category, but I liked it
a lot and I even liked it after seeing it a 2nd time. We inherited
the Cowboys and Aliens DVD with some
stuff my wife’s father left her and we watched it a couple of times in our
camper when we were stuck in New Mexico for a winter. Daniel Craig makes a
better 1860s American character that most of the Americans who’ve taken on that
kind of part.
35.
The Culpepper Cattle Company
36.
Little Big Man
37.
The Covered Wagon
This
1923 western pretty much has ever stereotype Hollywood ever invented for
westerns. Like most silent movies, the “acting” is often pretty terrible, but
not all of it. The staging of this film is amazing. The scenes of covered
wagons and stock crossing and attempting to cross the Platte River are
hyper-realistic in the fact that it is total chaos.
38.
Wyatt Earp
Kevin
Costner’s 1994 Wyatt Earp is, in my
opinion, a slightly more interesting interpretation than the Tombstone, if for
no other reason than Dennis Quaid’s Doc Holiday portrayal. Both stories are
pretty good, if not particularly historically accurate, but I liked this story
pretty well. The look, sound, casting, and screenplay are gritty and
believable. Of course, Costner’s Earp is as dead eyed and wooden as Costner is
more often than not.
39.
The Gunfighter
This is the 1950 Gregory Peck Gunfighter. [Not to
be confused with the incredibly awful 1999 Christopher Coppola/Francis Ford Coppola
directed/produced train wreck that, under no conditions should be considered
anything but a terrible -movie.] The Gunfighter isn’t bad, although it is a
romance of sorts.
40.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
41.
Django Unchained
Pure western fantasy with a little 2000’s
porn, but it is funny and entertaining.
42.
Cold Mountain
43.
Dead Man’s Walk
44.
Tombstone
45.
Dead Man
46.
The Missing
47.
The Outlaw Josey Wales
48.
The Kid
49.
Bad Company
50.
How the West Was Won
51.
Ride with the Devil
52.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
53.
Ned Kelly
54.
Cimarron
55.
The Valley of Violence
56.
Brimstone
57.
Slow West
58.
The Young Guns
59.
Ride with the Devil
60.
Geronimo: An American Legend
61.
The Alamo
62.
As a spectacularly accurate recent paper on human stupidity, “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity,” stated, “The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. . . Whenever I analyzed the blue-collar workers I found that the fraction σ of them were stupid. As σ's value was higher than I expected (First Law), paying my tribute to fashion I thought at first that segregation, poverty, lack of education were to be blamed. But moving up the social ladder I found that the same ratio was prevalent among the white-collar employees and among the students. More impressive still were the results among the professors. Whether I considered a large university or a small college, a famous institution or an obscure one, I found that the same fraction σ of the professors are stupid. So bewildered was I by the results, that I made a special point to extend my research to a specially selected group, to a real elite, the Nobel laureates. The result confirmed Nature's supreme powers: σ fraction of the Nobel laureates are stupid.” (I seriously recommend that you read this paper as it contains far more human natural selection information than practically anything I’ve seen since Euell Gibbon’s survivalist books.) As the illustration from that paper aptly describes, the four basic categories of humans are: “the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid.” (In clockwise rotation starting from the top left.)
