The Best Western Movies Ever Made
The best western movies ever made include some true popular classics from the early days of cinema, and more modern day films that captured our imagination and took us to the days of the wild, wild West. From Sergio Leone's classics like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly to the 2010 Joel and Ethan Coen remake of True Grit, the western movies listed here are considered some of the greatest of all time. Be sure to vote for your favorite westerns and vote down any you don't like.
What makes a great western? Aside from casting Clint Eastwood (he's in so many of these) or John Wayne, an outstanding western offers movie goers fantastic characters, lots of action, drama and tension, and certainly a nasty, memorable villain or two. Setting is obviously important in top western movies as well. Throw in a High Noon-style standoff and you simply can't miss. Those are really the most important elements in the best western and cowboy movies (while faithfulness to history is a plus, you might be surprised how many famous westerns aren't historically accurate).
What are you favorite western films? Which ones might convince you to stay home for the evening and relax in front of the tube? Vote for the greatest western movie ever made and be sure to add any of your favorite western movies that might be missing! Giddyup, and enjoy!
- Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) and his brothers, Morgan (Bill Paxton) and Virgil (Sam Elliott), have left their gunslinger ways behind them to settle down and start a business in the town of Tombstone, ...more
- After hired hand Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey) murders the father of 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Kim Darby), she seeks vengeance and hires U.S. Marshal "Rooster" Cogburn (John Wayne), a man of "true grit," to ...more
- Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) and his cowhands Charley (Kevin Costner) and Mose (Abraham Benrubi) are driving cattle across a large expanse of country. When Mose ventures into a sparse village to buy ...more
- A Mexican-American War veteran, Jeremiah Johnson (Robert Redford), heads to the mountains to live in isolation. Woefully unequipped for the task at hand, Johnson is fortunate to come across a ...more
- When prostitute Delilah Fitzgerald (Anna Thomson) is disfigured by a pair of cowboys in Big Whiskey, Wyoming, her fellow brothel workers post a reward for their murder, much to the displeasure of ...more
- Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood) watches helplessly as his wife and child are murdered, by Union men led by Capt. Terrill (Bill McKinney). Seeking revenge, Wales joins the Confederate Army. He refuses to ...more
- In the Southwest during the Civil War, a mysterious stranger, Joe (Clint Eastwood), and a Mexican outlaw, Tuco (Eli Wallach), form an uneasy partnership -- Joe turns in the bandit for the reward ...more
- When property owner Coy LaHood (Richard Dysart) starts using a band of hooligans to terrorize a group of small-town gold miners into giving up their territory, an enigmatic man named "Preacher" ...more
- The last members of a dying Native American tribe, the Mohicans -- Uncas (Eric Schweig), his father Chingachgook (Russell Means), and his adopted half-white brother Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) -- live ...more
- When gunslinger Joe Burdette (Claude Akins) kills a man in a saloon, Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) arrests him with the aid of the town drunk, Dude (Dean Martin). Before long, Burdette's ...more
- Questions arise when Senator Stoddard (James Stewart) attends the funeral of a local man named Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) in a small Western town. Flashing back, we learn Doniphon saved Stoddard, then ...more
- A Mexican village is at the mercy of Calvera, the leader of a band of outlaws. The townspeople, too afraid to fight for themselves, hire seven American gunslingers to free them from the bandits' ...more
- J.B. Books (John Wayne, in his final film role) is an aging gunfighter diagnosed with cancer who comes to Nevada at the turn of the 20th century. Renting a room from widowed Bond Rogers (Lauren ...more
- In this Western, a drifter with no name (Clint Eastwood) wanders into a small town, where his gun-slinging abilities are in high demand. When the drifter rides into Lago, he is met with incredulity ...more
- In this revered Western, Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) returns home to Texas after the Civil War. When members of his brother's family are killed or abducted by Comanches, he vows to track down his ...more
- A grizzled veteran rancher, Wil Andersen (John Wayne) is almost ready to embark on a big cattle drive when his crew abruptly quits to join in a gold rush. Left with no alternative, Anderson enlists ...more
- A Fistful of Dollars, titled on-screen as Fistful of Dollars, is a 1964 spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, alongside Gian Maria Volonté, Marianne Koch, ...more
- The true story of fast-draws and wild rides, battles with posses, train and bank robberies, a torrid love affair and a new lease on outlaw life in far away Bolivia. It is also a character study of a ...more
- After a gang of men unsuccessfully attempts to lynch him for a cattle rustling crime he did not commit, Jed Cooper (Clint Eastwood) is saved by marshal Dave Bliss (Ben Johnson) and judge Adam Fenton ...more
- Lieutenant Colonel Kirby Yorke (John Wayne) heads a cavalry post on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, defending settlers against Apaches launching raids from the Mexican side of the river. When ...more
- El Dorado is a 1966 American Western film produced and directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. Written by Leigh Brackett and loosely based on the novel The Stars in Their ...more
- Matthew Quigley (Tom Selleck) is an American rifleman who travels to the Australian outback to answer a help wanted ad calling for a sharpshooter. When Quigley meets his employer, Elliot Marston ...more
- 23Enigmatic gunslinger Shane (Alan Ladd) rides into a small Wyoming town with hopes of quietly settling down as a farmhand. Taking a job on homesteader Joe Starrett's (Van Heflin) farm, Shane is drawn ...more
- 24The avenging head of the McCandle clan returns to his estranged family and leads the search for his kidnapped grandson. Big Jake sets off, his sons in tow, to deliver the ransom to the kidnappers, ...more
- The last job of Calvary Captain Nathan Brittles (John Wayne) before retirement is to soothe relations with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians after Custer's last stand. At the same time, he must ...more
