Top 5 Westerns

Ned

Honorable Mention to Shane, Lonesome Dove, & Tombstone.  I would have given Shane more but only like this movie because I get to debate if Shane is dead at the end of it or not. Lonesome Dove would have been #2 on this list but it's a TV mini-series and not a true movie.  Finally Tombstone would have gotten a higher rating but only like the scenes that Val Kilmer is in.


#5 - The Searchers

There are a fewer John Ford and John Wayne movies that come to mind when putting together a top western list, but I keep coming back to the Searches.  It has all the trappings of a big John Ford movie and it is John Wayne at his best John Wayne.

#4 - The Wild Bunch

If you haven't seen the Wild Bunch then you need to fire up the Netflix at work an get it done.  This is the movie that began ultra-violence in movies.  Its as if they said, "Enough of the talking, let's just make a movie that is one long gunfight."


#3 - Unforgiven

It's just good.  The pacing is perfect.  The fact there is no real good or bad guys.  It addresses the idea of how a hit man was hired and how killing is a dirty ass business.  The Duck of Death is awesome.  It gives the unnamed rider of the Spaghetti Western a sunset to ride off into. Every story line is entertaining, no scene is wasted, and no extra frame of film was used.


#2 - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Instead of the lone rider, this is one of the true buddy westerns, and yet there is the interplay of a mutual love interest.  This movie is smart and ends like an opera.

#1 - The Good the Bad and the Ugly

Why hasn't anyone else made a western like this?  It is a movie that stands on its own as if delivered into the collective subconscious of humanity and not actually made by humans.  The best way to describe this movie for those that have had that portion of their subconscious removed is that it is a bar fight between three men that spills over into the street, the church next door, the prison camp across town, a battle over a bridge, and  finally a gunfight in a graveyard.  Why don't they make westerns like this...they can't.



Kendall


I like Westerns, but I don't typically love them.  I also don't typically like movies shot before... say... 1980, and I hate black and white, so this isn't a slam dunk category for me.  That being said, I'm your huckleberry.

#5 - The Quick and the Dead
It's a freaking gunfighting tournament.  Great stuff.

#4 - Seven Samurai
Okay, not really a Western by name, but in every other way it is.  Awesome, awesome movie.

#3 - Cemetary Without Crosses
The perfect Spaghetti/Paella Western.  Love the bounty hunter angle, and I'm a sucker for the anti-hero.

#2 - 3:10 to Yuma
It gets panned, but I really like it.  I love Christian Bale in this sort of role.

#1 - Tombstone
One of my top-ten favorite movies ever.  Ned's wrong -- this movie is great even in the parts without Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday (though he is clearly the best character.)