6. 8 Seconds (1994) 92q3r
This biopic of bull-riding champion Lane Frost might seem like a sports film at first glance, but it belongs squarely in the lineage of the rodeo Western, in fact, thematically it shares a lot with Chloe Zhao’s The Rider (2017).
Directed by John G. Avildsen (who won an Oscar for Rocky [1976]), it captures the pain and poetry of a diminishing lifestyle, the modern cowboy as both icon and casualty. Luke Perry, probably best known at the time for Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990-2000), gives a committed performance as Frost, conveying both the physical toll and emotional cost of living by the rodeo circuit.
The film doesn’t shy away from sentimentality, and frames masculinity in a rare delicate light, making 8 Seconds a far more thought-provoking experience than you might expect.
7. The Proposition (2005)
John Hillcoat’s Australian Western is a brutal and unflinching comment on colonial violence, family, and the myth of civilisation. Guy Pearce is on sublime form as Charlie Burns, an outlaw offered an impossible deal: kill his older brother, or his younger one will hang.
What follows is a meditative yet violent action movie. Nick Cave’s script is unsurprisingly lean and poetic and the sweeping visuals of the outback recall both The Searchers (1956) and strangely enough, Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972).
But this is far beyond some sort of simple homage; The Proposition strips the Western to its rawest elements, blood, land, honour, and leaves a lasting impression.
8. Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)
Takashi Miike, probably best known for his ultra violent Audition (1999) or Ichi the Killer (2001), unleashes this gleefully unhinged spaghetti-Western which he sells as a love letter to Leone, Kurosawa, and the grindhouse scene all at once.
Set in a mythical, stylised version of the American frontier, as filtered through Japanese pop culture, it features rival clans, a mysterious stranger, and a whole heap of bloodshed, all delivered in heavily accented English by a Japanese cast.
It really shouldn’t work, but it does, thanks to Miike’s wild invention and visual bravado; very much something that we’ve come to expect from him over the years. Quentin Tarantino even turns up for a cameo, just to underscore the film’s cinephile credentials; and of course, then went on to helm Django Unchained (2012) himself.
Sukiyaki Western Django is mad, but also undoubtedly mesmerising.
9. The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008)
This Korean twist on the spaghetti Western, set in 1930s Manchuria, is pure cinematic pulp. Director Kim Jee-woon reimagines The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as a mad-cap chase movie, where bandits, bounty hunters, and the Japanese army all race to find buried treasure. Think Rat Race (2001) by way of The Wild Bunch (1969).
The action sequences are astonishing, especially a mid-film train raid and a final desert showdown, but what elevates it is its sense of anarchic fun. Song Kang-ho steals the show as the Weird, but all three leads bring a charisma and charm that results in an absolute blast from beginning to end.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird is a film that understands the joy of the Western without being shackled to its conventions, and plays loose with the role of severity that permeates the genre, it’s an absolute delight.
10. The Rover (2014)
Set in a lawless, post-collapse Australia, David Michôd’s The Rover might not look like a Western at first glance, but its DNA is unmistakably intertwined with that of the Western. It’s a lone-gunman revenge story, ittedly without cowboys or indeed with many genre tropes, but steeped in frontier fatalism.
Guy Pearce plays a man chasing the thieves who stole his car, and something more. Robert Pattinson, in what is now a customary terrific display, plays his socially challenged hostage. The film is slow-burning, sparse in dialogue, and bleak to the point of despair, but there’s a strange, bizarre beauty to its desolation.
It often feels like a Western at the end of the world; a film about what’s left when there’s nothing left to believe in.