The Western is a classic film genre, so it's no surprise that over the decades some have endured
to not only be great in its category, but among the best movies ever. From old-timey classics to
violent Spaghetti Westerns, these are the only near-perfect Westerns according to Metacritic.
Spaghetti Westerns reached new heights with "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,"
Sergio Leone's epic 1966 story of three gunfighters on the trail of some Confederate gold.
Leone had pioneered Italy's run of stylish, stark, yet grandiose Westerns with the great "A
Fistful of Dollars," which set up Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name, a lone and unpredictable
antihero who was good with a gun and always on the move. In "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," he's
back — and not even nicknaming him Blondie can hide how dangerous he is. The tension runs high
as Blondie forms a wary partnership with bandit Tuco to go after the gold. They might betray each
other ... or they might run afoul of the cruel, capable Angel Eyes, who's also on the trail.
The result is a movie as hauntingly beautiful as it is violent. It serves up both a mythic
American West and one that's stripped of all the old-fashioned lore of good guys and their
white hats. It's a genre-defining film that absolutely deserves its 90 on Metacritic.
Released in 2007, "No Country for Old Men" has a 91 on Metacritic, and it definitely
deserves its place among the top-ranked Westerns. The Coen brothers go especially
dark for this tale of stolen drug money, violent times, and the forces of chance
and fate. The movie pulled in an incredible Oscar haul, taking home statues for Best Picture,
Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The story is a film noir plot set in a Western world. Llewelyn Moss is out hunting one day
when he stumbles on the grisly aftermath of a shootout — and a briefcase full of cash.
He takes it ... and that decision changes everything. Enter the terrifying,
off-kilter Anton Chigurh, a hired killer who's supposed to retrieve the money and
who's so ruthless and violent in pursuit of it that his own employers regret bringing him in.
"Nah I don't think that's how I'd describe him."
"How would you describe him?"
"I guess I'd say he doesn't have a sense of humor."
Trying to make sense of it all is the weary Ed Tom Bell, a sheriff who's seen
just about all he can stand but who will have to see this horror all the same.
"No Country for Old Men" is bleak, funny, and deeply memorable,
especially for its villain. With his bowl haircut, air-pressure bolt gun,
and insistence on high-stakes coin flips, Chigurh instantly became an icon.
If you missed "The Rider," there's never been a better time to check it out — director Chloé
Zhao’s Oscar win for "Nomadland" gives you a great excuse for revisiting her backlist.
And you'll have the benefit of hitting on one of Metacritic's top Westerns, with a Metascore of 92.
"The Rider" is the story of Brady, whose life on the pro rodeo circuit is cut short when an
accident leaves him with a brain injury that causes seizures. He's not supposed to ride again.
A lot of movies would follow an inspirational sports movie template and end with Brady back
at the height of his powers, but "The Rider" is more restrained and realistic. Instead, we follow
Brady's struggle to adjust to falling back into a life of limited options and even less glory.
Film critic Godfrey Cheshire notes that the documentary-like realism is one of the
film's strengths. What you're seeing, from horse-training to trauma to friendship, is
often real. Zhao handles all of this delicately, with both empathy and respect. It's a vision of
the modern American West that's rooted in real life and real people, and that makes it sing.
Clocking in on Metacritic with a score of 93, "Rio Bravo" isn't just one of the best
Westerns — it's one of the all-time great team-up movies. It was director Howard Hawks' cinematic
rebuttal to "High Noon," which he thought made its sheriff too wishy-washy and ineffective.
"Rio Bravo" has a laid-back, unhurried pace. It has shootouts and action, but it's also a
classic hangout movie where a lot of the fun comes from watching the low-key interaction between the
likable characters. One of the contrasts with "High Noon" is that sense of friendliness.
Here, when trouble strikes and there's going to be a raid on the local jail,
John Wayne's Sheriff John T. Chance rounds up a team of motley allies. They might seem unqualified
or all washed-up, but he sees something in them. And with charming performances from Dean Martin,
Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, and Walter Brennan, we see something in them too — fun.
John Ford's "Stagecoach," with a 93 on Metacritic, has a simple and irresistible premise.
Take one stagecoach, fill it with a cast of colorful characters, and put it in enough
danger that all the characters will have to rise to the occasion in order to stay alive.
The result is a terrific movie, one that's both exciting and emotionally involving.
It also provided John Wayne's breakout role as the Ringo Kid, the heart-of-gold outlaw
whose gentle courtship of saloon girl Dallas is one of the movie's highlights. And it cemented
John Ford as as a Western specialist, as he'd go on to make other classics, making
]the film feels even more important. But it doesn't need historical context to sell it. This
one's not a classic because of the role it played in movie history. It's just that enjoyable.
"McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is Robert Altman's version of the West:
and with a Metacritic score of 93, it's a very good one.
Muddy and mumbly and morally ambiguous, with its blend of brutality and poetry and its
sense of the tumultuous life of a whole town, it feels like an ancestor of TV's "Deadwood."
The film offers wonderful performances from Warren Beatty and Julie Christie as the two
title characters. They start out as business partners in McCabe's brothel and eventually
drift into a kind of romance. But the love story isn't necessarily a hopeful one,
and the boom in business doesn't keep them out of trouble. None of this is destined to end well.
That nearly dreamlike quality is important because Altman was reinventing how movies worked. While
parts of his unconventional approach, like the way the dialogue is deliberately hard to make out,
might frustrate viewers, the complexity here is rewarding.
"McCabe and Mrs. Miller" will linger in your mind long after the credits have rolled.
With a Metascore of 94,
we have 1950's "The Gunfighter," which depicts an age-old problem: When you're the best,
you're also the one everyone wants to beat. Sooner or later, there's nowhere to go but down.
Gregory Peck plays Jimmy Ringo, famous as the best gunfighter in the West. He's so famous,
in fact, that he always attracts trouble. There are too many men looking to kill him and take up
his mantle. He's constantly having to fight for his life — and when his challengers are dead,
their families sometimes show up seeking revenge. All he wants, at this point, is to reconnect with
his estranged wife and finally meet his son, but his reputation threatens to make it impossible.
The tension and tragedy of the movie work together to give it an almost hypnotic pull.
Its look at the hollowness of celebrity and the sorrow of a life spent on killing
once put the movie ahead of its time. Now that approach makes the movie immortal.
"The Searchers" may not sit quite at the top of Metacritic's list
but it still has a solid claim to being the best Western ever made.
In 2008, the American Film Institute honored it with that distinction,
and Sight & Sound went even further by declaring it the seventh best film of all time, period.
It's easy to see why the movie attracts so many admirers. The compelling story that follows John
Wayne's Ethan Edwards going after his kidnapped niece, takes a heroic premise and twists it.
The result exposes all the brutality and racism that can lie beneath the legends of the Old West.
Because the unsettling truth is that Ethan isn't trying to save Debbie ... he only wants to kill
her so she won't have to live with having been, quote, "despoiled" by her Comanche abductors.
That deep-seated anger and prejudice make for one of Wayne's most complex performances.
"From now on you stay out of this - all of ya! I don't want ya with me.
Don't need ya for what I gotta do."
Director John Ford portrays all this viscerally, and accompanies it with some extraordinary
landscapes, giving "The Searchers" a desolate but beautiful sense of place.
The combination makes for an incredibly influential movie.
Harsh, striking, and powerful, this isn't just a movie; It's a cultural landmark.
Even if you haven't seen "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," you might know its most famous quote:
"This is the West sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
The quote fits the movie, which is a classic with a 94 on Metacritic. "The Man Who Shot
Liberty Valance" is all about how tall tales and legends helped shape the Old West. It zooms in
on one story in particular — the intersection of the fates of future senator Ransom Stoddard,
practical rancher Tom Doniphon, and wicked outlaw Liberty Valance.
Valance terrorizes the town of Shinbone, while Stoddard wants to bring it closer to
civilization and order. Tom stands somewhere in between the two — his intentions are good,
but he lives by a violent code that Stoddard can't approve of. Something
has to give ... and when it does, it will make history. But will the history be the truth?
John Ford directed a number of celebrated Westerns,
but "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" as Roger Ebert points out is, quote,
"the most pensive and thoughtful." If you want to see how lawless territories became lawful,
and what was won and lost in the process, this is the film for you.
"The Wild Bunch" earned its Metascore of 97 by drastically shaking up the Western template. This
1969 film pumped the genre full of controversial and unprecedented levels of cynicism and violence,
giving us a Vietnam War-era look at all the supposed cowboy heroes of times gone by.
The men in "The Wild Bunch" mostly live sordid lives. They're vicious outlaws with
very little honor. They don't hesitate to kill, and they're quick to use human
shields when they think it will help. Their whole world is one of cruelty and violence,
but just before this unrelenting parade of misery and cutthroat behavior becomes too much,
director Sam Peckinpah tosses in an actual moral dilemma. One member of the gang is
kidnapped and tortured. Can the others bring themselves to risk their lives for him?
While the movie certainly attracted plenty of criticism for its viciousness,
time has definitely been on its side. In a retrospective review, Rolling Stone said -
"The hard action, bracing wit, and mournful grace of Peckinpah's cowboy classic shames every new
movie around. It's a towering achievement that grows more riveting and resonant with the years."
The top-rated Western on Metacritic, with a score of 98, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" is
famous for its grim, tragic portrayals of greed in action. Humphrey Bogart plays Fred C. Dobbs,
a down-on-his-luck man whose health and sanity unravel over the course of the film. That's what
can happen when you go prospecting - even when you find gold, you tend to lose everything else.
"Badges? We ain't got no badges.
We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"
Dobbs and his friends go out into the Sierra Madre mountains to dig for gold.
The surroundings are inhospitable, the work is exhausting, and the men are increasingly
paranoid. The tension is almost unbearable, and Bogart vividly evokes Dobbs' fraying mental state.
It all leads up to a tragic, ironic twist that even "The Twilight Zone" would envy.
The film still stands as one of the few to have a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score,
and to sum it all up, Slant says -
"this deservingly canonized behemoth is one of the relatively few films
that transcends the medium to become a mandatory viewing experience for
anyone that identifies themselves as a human being, period."
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