The Best Modern Western Movies
The best modern westerns are not necessarily period pieces but they all capture the wild essence of the West. The Western is a classic film genre full of grit, action, and life or death situations. While many of our favorite Western tropes are historically inaccurate, its films represent America at its most mythological. The top modern western movies build upon this tradition while amping up situations with current technology and cutting edge storylines. This is a list of recent western movies featuring everything from Django Unchained to 3:10 to Yuma to Dances with Wolves.
What new movies will you find on this list of the best modern westerns? Tombstone offers a modern twist on one of the most famous stories of the western genre. Wyatt Earp and his brothers – with a little help from Doc Holliday – star in this exciting tale of lawmen versus unruly cowboys who are terrorizing the land. Sukiyaki Western Django is another great modern western. Like that film, many ostensible Westerns have gone far beyond the Old West setting while still remaining true to the genre's roots.
Other good movies featured on this list of the top modern western films include The Proposition, Unforgiven, and Ain't Them Bodies Saints. Which modern western is the best? Decide by giving your favorites a thumbs up, and add any great movies that are missing.
- 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
- Residents of a small Texas town embark on cattle drive to Montana.
- 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
- 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
- After an outlaw named Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) murders her father, feisty 14-year-old farm girl Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) hires Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a boozy, trigger-happy lawman, to ...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
- Outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) terrorizes 1800s Arizona, especially the Southern Railroad, until he is finally captured. Wade must be brought to trial, so Dan Evans (Christian Bale), the owner of a ...more
- Toby is a divorced father who's trying to make a better life for his son. His brother Tanner is an ex-convict with a short temper and a loose trigger finger. Together, they plan a series of heists ...more
- Cory Lambert is a wildlife officer who finds the body of an 18-year-old woman on an American Indian reservation in snowy Wyoming. When the autopsy reveals that she was raped, FBI agent Jane Banner ...more
- John Tunstall (Terence Stamp), a distinguished British gentleman, employs downtrodden youths to tend his herd on the New Mexican frontier. When Tunstall is gunned down by the crooked Lawrence G. ...more
- The true story of a legendary feud.
- Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and his longtime friend and partner Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) travel the 1880s Southwest, bringing justice to lawless towns desperate enough to hire them. In the mining ...more
- While exploring the uncharted wilderness in 1823, frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) sustains life-threatening injuries from a brutal bear attack. When a member (Tom Hardy) of his hunting ...more
- Broken Trail is a 2006 Western miniseries directed by Walter Hill and starring Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church. Written by Alan Geoffrion, who also wrote the novel, the story is about an aging ...more
- The epic biography of western lawman Wyatt Earp, who at an early age, is taught that nothing matters more than family and the law. He becomes a respected sheriff in Dodge City and Tombstone. Joined ...more
- 16In 1892, legendary Army Capt. Joseph Blocker reluctantly agrees to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief and his family back to their tribal land. Embarking on a harrowing and perilous journey from Fort ...more
- Looking to mine for gold, greedy industrialist Bartholomew Bogue seizes control of the Old West town of Rose Creek. With their lives in jeopardy, Emma Cullen and other desperate residents turn to ...more
- Two years before the Civil War, Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave, finds himself accompanying an unorthodox German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) on a mission to capture the ...more
- Infamous and unpredictable, Jesse James (Brad Pitt), nicknamed the fastest gun in the west, plans his next big heist while he launches pre-emptive strikes against those looking to collect the reward ...more
- 20In 1931, the Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Va., run a multipurpose backwoods establishment that hides their true business, bootlegging. Middle brother Forrest (Tom Hardy) is the brain of the ...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
- An anthology of six short films that take place in 19th-century post-Civil War era during the settling of the Old West.
- When rancher and single mother of two Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett) sees her teenage daughter, Lily (Evan Rachel Wood), kidnapped by Apache rebels, she reluctantly accepts the help of her ...more
- 24Saloon owner Al Swearengen clashes with Sheriff Seth Bullock as the residents of Deadwood celebrate South Dakota's statehood in 1889.
- While racing toward the town of Red Rock in post-Civil War Wyoming, bounty hunter John "The Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his fugitive prisoner (Jennifer Jason Leigh) encounter another bounty ...more
