The Western genre has been around since the beginning of cinema and has stuck around so long because it has changed with it. The things that haven’t changed are the tropes of the Western that we all know. From the costume to the production design to the stories told, getting the perfect Western vibes can be hard to pull off. Here are 10 that nail them perfectly.
Logan (2017)
A bit of a cheat since this one is set in the future, but James Mangold’s Logan is a Western. This is not a “Logan is secretly a Western” take, but rather a “Logan is, with the utmost certainty, a Western” take. In addition to its dusty setting, Logan directly references Shane (1953), where a worn-out former gunslinger, is content with living out the rest of his days in peace and is suddenly pulled back into his old ways to help a family of settlers keep their land from an evil cattle baron.
Logan (Hugh Jackman) finds himself in a similar position as Shane, in a world where mutants are on the edge of extinction he finds himself, with dying Professor Xavier, struggling to find a reason to keep living. Until a young girl, Laura (Dafne Keen), with similar powers to him, seeks him out to help her escape the monsters that created her. Logan and Shane (both titular characters) are taken back to the habits they tried to leave behind but in service of kindness and are given reasons to keep fighting in a world that has disheartened them. While taking place in the future, Logan is directly influenced by and completely understands the Old West themes and aesthetics in the classic films of the genre.
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
Sam Rami’s oft-forgotten Western, The Quick and the Dead, stars Sharon Stone as a gunslinger who rides into a small town and enters its quick-draw tournament to avenge her father’s murder. This sandy town is filled with a who’s who of character actors that know exactly what kind of movie they’re in, which is what makes the town feel so alive. Every character has distinctive costume designs and personalities that make them feel like real people with internal thoughts and motivation.
This Sharon Stone-led passion project has Sam Rami at the helm of this extravagant Western, and Rami knows exactly when to throw in a Dutch angle to create tension and when to pull back to let the emotional scenes play out. Impeccably over-the-top and surprisingly sensitive with haunting performances from Stone and a young Leonardo DiCaprio, The Quick and the Dead is one of the more aesthetically pleasing Westerns out there for any fan of the genre.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
The second James Mangold movie on this list, 3:10 to Yuma is a gritty take on the old west that truly demonstrates the struggle between good and evil. Rancher Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is part of a paid posse to escort the notorious outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the 3:10 to Yuma train, where Wade will be hanged for his crimes. Evans agrees to be part of this posse to save his farm from being sold, and he genuinely believes that Wade needs to be brought to justice. However, Wade’s outlaw gang is hunting down the escort party, led by the cold Charlie Prince (Ben Foster), to free Wade before he gets on the train.
This somber and gruesome tale has many gorgeous sequences where they roam through stunning valleys and campfire-lit action that endears the audience to Evans’ struggle to triumph over the epitome of evil that is Wade and his gang. 3:10 to Yuma is a remake of a Western from 1957 of the same name, which is why it feels like a classic western while flawlessly being updated for a modern audience that is perfect for a Western fan of any era.
The Wild Bunch (1969)
The West is no longer wild in Sam Peckinpah’s meditation on aging and being unprepared for the world rapidly changing around you. The Wild Bunch is about a group of older outlaws in the West that is modernizing by the day, and are looking for their last job to hang up their hats and no longer live the outlaw life. In 1913, Pike (William Holden) and his gang, who no longer recognize the world around them, are trying to figure out where they fit in. Before the MPAA, there was the Hays Code, where movies were not allowed to have anti-heroes as the main characters in movies. Upstanding citizens and lawmen were the heroes of Westerns when the Hays Code was being enforced, but when the MPAA rating system was adopted, you could have characters and stories that were much bloodier and more accurate depictions of the Old West.
This gang of outlaws are killers and this is demonstrated in the opening scene where civilians are caught in the crossfire between them and the lawmen and both sides kill a lot of innocent people. While being technically innovative and profoundly violent, this movie also acts as a metaphor for the rapidly changing film industry, in which no one was certain where they would fit in post-Hays Code. With plenty of train robberies and shootouts throughout, The Wild Bunch is the definitive Western that is not trying to glamorize the West, and it has a lot more on its mind than most.
Unforgiven (1992)
Very similar to other movies on this list, Clint Eastwood’s self-examination of aging, Unforgiven is about retired gunslinger William Munny (Eastwood) trying to raise his children on their hog farm and taking one final bounty hunting job. The job is to find two men who committed the heinous crime of attacking two women and permanently scarring them. Munny, a recent widower, is trying to leave his life of gunslinging behind him and live the life his wife wanted for him, however, we quickly see that he is comically bad at being a hog farmer.
When offered the job, he turns it down and denies who he is, but eventually realizes that he needs the money to help give his children a better life, and he could use his skills for good. As the movie goes on, we come to learn that Munny was not a good man before he met his wife, having killed many innocent people over the years. Having Eastwood star and direct is a brilliant choice after he had such an iconic career as the star of Westerns early on in his career, is now aging, and is being used to dissect the idea of the “good guy” in the old westerns, which he so often played. Unforgiven is a bleak movie that does not shy away from its heavy themes and nail how tiring and distressing the Old West was.
The Good the Bad the Weird (2008)
This oddball Korean Western, directed by Jee-woon Kim, The Good, the Bad, the Weird is about a bounty hunter, a thief, and an outlaw who are all competing to find buried treasure after they discover a treasure map. Based on the 1966 film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, this film smartly throws in the legendary Song Kang-ho as the titular “Weird” who adds a tremendous amount of levity opposite two very serious characters. Though none of the characters are given backstories, each of these men is entirely shown through their actions and their costume choices.
“The Good” (Jung Woo-sung) is dressed in a very classical western duster and cowboy hat, “The Bad” (Lee Byung-hun) is usually dressed in all black the entire movie, and Song Kang-ho is dressed in an outfit that is impossible to pin down in any era. Though it is based in the 1940s, there are still plenty of shootouts and Fury Road-esque chases that happen in beautiful desert landscapes are a fun and hilarious addition to the Old West genre.
Young Guns (1988)
The definition of a vibes movie (coined by Patrick H. Willems), Christopher Cain’s Young Guns has cool coming out of every orifice. About six gunslingers, who want revenge for the murder of the rancher who took them in, quickly find themselves in the crosshairs of the law. The costume design in this movie should have won an Oscar for how distinctive and personal each of the characters looks feel. Every single person in this wildly stacked cast has two six-shooters and a duster to complete their classic Western outlaw look.
Even Dermot Mulroney is fully committed to his character of Dirty Steve Stephens and is covered in dirt the entire movie, even after he takes a bath. Violent and surprisingly grim, Young Guns is a great movie for any fan of the genre looking for fantastic wild west action and vibes.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
The Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is weaving six different stories over the course of two hours. The Old West aesthetic is captured fully in this comedic, and sometimes dramatic, collection of short films because all sides of it are shown. From prospecting to gunslingers, and frontiers-people, the movie puts the people that made up the West on full display and finds the comedy in a lot of their situations. Specifically, the comical “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” sequence that opens the film with Tim Blake Nelson, as the titular Buster Scruggs, who is the best quick draw in the West but is very quickly beaten by someone faster, and he accepts his fate by saying, “You can’t be top dog forever.”
However, the vignette “The Gal Who Got Rattled” is much bleaker in that it depicts a young woman headed West in a wagon train to claim land, according to the Homestead Act, who is plagued by tragedy before she ever gets there. Acting as a reflection of life in the Old West, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs understands the highs and lows better than most.
Django Unchaineed (2012)
Quentin Tarantino’s hyper-violent revisionist Western, stars Jamie Fox as a former slave who wants to rescue his wife from a plantation owner with the help of his German bounty-hunting partner. This movie understands the West so well because it forefronts a big part of American history that most Westerns either shy away from or don’t acknowledge at all: slavery. While the movie does take a lot of liberties with its depiction of slavery, it still does more than most that are set in this time period.
The movie also has Django (Fox) triumph over the slave owners who took his wife away from him and kill the entire family, which never actually happened in real life, but makes you wish it had. Extremely violent and hyper-stylized, Django Unchained is a tribute to the Spaghetti Westerns of the past while bringing in many new elements to the genre. With incredible costume design and gorgeous cinematography of some of the most stunning settings splattered with blood, Django Unchained is one of the genre’s best.
True Grit (2010)
Another Coen Brothers Western, a remake of the John Wayne classic of the same name, this time stars national treasure Jeff Bridges. About a young girl (Hailee Steinfeld) who hires U.S. Marshal “Rooster” Cogburn (Bridges) to help her track down and kill the man who killed her father. Unlike The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and for only being PG-13, Joel and Ethan Coen did not pull any punches when it comes to depicting the Old West.
This dreary and dusty Western has Steinfeld and a one-eyed Bridges trekking across desert landscapes to find the man that killed her father, narrowly escaping a cavalcade of crazy characters in search of revenge. A somber yet human story, True Grit is in the long line of post-modern Westerns that is not trying to embellish the Old West but rather live in the dreadful nightmare that it was, especially for a young woman.
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