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!
- 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 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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 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
- 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
- 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
- Former marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is preparing to leave the small town of Hadleyville, New Mexico, with his new bride, Amy (Grace Kelly), when he learns that local criminal Frank Miller has been ...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
- Enigmatic 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
- For a Few Dollars More is a 1965 Italian spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Gian Maria Volonté. German actor Klaus Kinski also plays 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
- A Civil War soldier develops a relationship with a band of Lakota Indians. Attracted by the simplicity of their lifestyle, he chooses to leave his former life behind to be with them. Having observed ...more
- There's a single piece of land around Flagstone with water on it, and rail baron Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) aims to have it, knowing the new railroad will have to stop there. He sends his henchman ...more
- John Ford's landmark Western revolves around an assorted group of colorful passengers aboard the Overland stagecoach bound for Lordsburg, New Mexico, in the 1880s. An alcoholic philosophizer (Thomas ...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
- Rambling man Emmett (Scott Glenn) assembles a group of misfit cowboys (Kevin Costner), (Kevin Kline, Danny Glover). After helping a group of settlers track down a pack of thieves, Emmett and his men ...more
