For decades, the Western was one of the most popular film genres—and then it wasn't. Though it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why stories of cowboys, outlaws, and settlers moving West fell out of favor, the simplest explanation may be that the market became oversaturated with them. Whatever the reason they stopped getting made, a film fan looking to explore the genre today has a lot of options. To help you narrow it down, here are 25 classic westerns every film fan needs to watch. (Keep in mind though that many of these films are decades old and include narrative elements, particularly regarding the treatment and characterization of Indigenous Americans, that many may find problematic today.)
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1 | Stagecoach (1939)
John Ford is remembered as one of the great directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and a master of the Western—and Stagecoach stands as one of his best. It focuses on the harrowing journey of the occupants of a lonely stagecoach as they travel through the Southwest, through territory occupied by the Apache tribe. Filled with action and suspense, it was nominated for seven Oscars and turned a young actor named John Wayne into an A-list star, though Ford had to fight the studio to be allowed to cast him.
2 | Red River (1948)
Nine years after Stagecoach, John Wayne was well-established as a Western icon when he made this film for director Howard Hawks. Wayne plays a cattle driver moving a herd from Texas to Kansas with the help of his adopted son, played by Montgomery Clift. Tensions mount as the drive suffers on mishap after another and the two clash over how best to reach their destination alive. The scene in which the two men lead the cattle across the titular river is the stuff of legend.
3 | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Though nominally an adventure film, this classic, directed by John Huston, trades in many Western tropes in telling the story of three men who band together to search for gold in the untamed Mexican mountain range of the title. Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, and Walter Huston (the director’s father) star in this tense, thrill-a-minute story of lives undone by greed.
4 | Winchester ‘73 (1950)
Anthony Mann directs this unusual picture blending elements of the Western and film noir. The episodic plot follows the journey of the titular rifle as it makes its way from one unlucky owner to another; one of them, Lin (played by Jimmy Stewart in the first of eight movies he made with Mann) wants the gun back so he can settle the score with the outlaw who stole it from him.
5 | High Noon (1952)
Though acclaimed upon release, this Gary Cooper star vehicle courted controversy too, as some viewers (including John Wayne) found its storyline—about a town marshal who must decide whether to face off against a ruthless gang of bandits or flee the town—to be un-American and antithetical to the true ideals of the genre. Indeed, its focus on realism (including a plot that unfolds in real time) eschews simple moralizing in favor of verisimilitude—and earned it nominations for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
6 | Shane (1953)
Directed by George Stevens in vivid Technicolor, Shane leans into the Western as fertile ground for myth-making, telling the story of Shane (Alan Ladd), a drifter with a mysterious past who is hired to help out on the ranch owned by the Starrett family, including young Joey (Brandon deWilde), who takes a shine to the laconic stranger. Shane’s skill with a weapon is revealed when the Starrett’s home is threatened by a group of cattle ranchers who want to steal their land, and he must put his life on the line to defend them. The iconic closing scene has been ranked as one of the greatest film endings ever.
7 | Johnny Guitar (1954)
Ignored in the U.S., this story of revenge and betrayal from director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause) was hailed by French film critics as one of the best examples of the genre ever made—the "Beauty and the Beast of Westerns, a Western dream," according to director François Truffaut. It stars Joan Crawford, cast against type as the strong-willed owner of a saloon in a remote ranching town in Arizona who gets on the wrong side of the locals. They take issue with the fact that she once had an affair with an outlaw known as the Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady)—particularly Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), who fancies the Kid herself. Simmering tensions boil over when a drifter named Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden) comes to town. The film’s vivid colors and pointed artifice would later influence the style of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar.
8 | The Searchers (1956)
Another John Ford epic, The Searchers stars an aging John Wayne as a Civil War veteran who has spent years looking for his niece (Natalie Wood) who was taken by raiders from a tribe of Comanche. Wayne gives one of his best performances in the lead role, his character’s singular obsession with meting out revenge transforming it into something of a dark reassessment of the genre’s tropes and themes. In 2008, the American Film Institute ranked it as the best Western ever made.
9 | Rio Bravo (1959)
John Wayne and Howard Hawks re-teamed for this story of a Texas sheriff (Wayne) who arrests a powerful rancher for murder and, with the help of a few locals, must fend off the man’s gang of hired outlaws to hold him in jail until federal marshals arrive to take him into custody. The story of an isolated group of do-gooders facing impossible odds, it would later inspire a thematic remake in 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13, from writer/director John Carpenter.
10 | The Magnificent Seven (1960)
An unofficial remake of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven transfers the story of a small town beset upon by outlaws and the motley band of heroes who comes together to protect it from the Japanese countryside to a village in Mexico. With a cast that includes Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn among the heroes and Eli Wallach as the villain, it was a box office disappointment in the U.S. but a huge hit worldwide, begetting three sequels, a television series, and a 2016 remake starring Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, and Chris Pratt.
11 | Hud (1963)
Paul Newman stars as the title character, the selfish and overly ambitious son of a respected cattle rancher (Melvyn Douglas). The two butt heads when their herd is threatened by disease and Hud wants to sell the animals off to an unsuspecting buyer, while his father refuses to courts such dishonesty. Caught in between the two strong-willed men is Hud’s nephew (Shane’s Brandon deWilde). For its focus on the less-than-heroic Hud, the film is often considered an early example of the “anti-Western.”
12 | The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
The third and most iconic entry in Italian director Sergio Leone’s trilogy of “spaghetti Westerns” made in Italy and starring Clint Eastwood, this followup to A Fistful of Dollars and A Few Dollars More finds Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” facing off against two other gunfighters (Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach) as they all search for a hidden horde of Confederate gold. Filled with the director’s signature widescreen vistas and long, suspense-filled takes, it’s a stunning example of style as substance.
13 | True Grit (1969)
Based on the acclaimed novel by Charles Portis, this late-career John Wayne vehicle casts the actor as one-eyed U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, who agrees to help a young girl named Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) track down the outlaw who killed her father. Wayne won his first Oscar for his turn as the gruff but lovable Cogburn, later reprising the role in a 1975 sequel, called simply Rooster Cogburn, opposite Katharine Hepburn. A 2010 remake, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, was also met with acclaim, earning 10 Oscar nominations, though winning none.
14 | Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Featuring Paul Newman and Robert Redford in career-defining roles, this quintessential buddy Western follows the escapades of the titular outlaws as they outrun the law across two continents. The smart dialogue, thrilling action scenes, and the charm of its leads made it a hit that stands the test of time.
15 | The Wild Bunch (1969)
One of the first films to truly reckon with the violence inherent in a genre loaded with guns, this Sam Peckinpah masterpiece utilizes quick cutting and slow-motion to highlight the bloody fallout in its story of an outlaw gang operating near the U.S./Mexico border in the early 20th century. The cast includes William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien, Ben Johnson, and Warren Oates.
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16 | Little Big Man (1970)
Directed by Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) and based on the novel by Thomas Berger, Little Big Man stars Dustin Hoffman as Jack, a white man who grew up among the Cheyenne nation in the mid-1800s, and later attempts to reintegrate into mainstream American life. The film becomes something of a tragicomic farce; told via a framing device as Jack tells his life story to a historian, it illustrates the way “civilization” proves hard to swallow for a man used to a simpler way of life and critiques the violence inherent in settlers’ movement west—the stuff most Westerns are made of, in other words.
17 | McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Robert Altman deliberately avoided the familiar elements of the Western film for this artsy but still entertaining Warren Beatty/Julie Christie star vehicle. The pair star as the title duo, a gambler and a prostitute who team up to open a brothel and gambling hall in a lawless Washington town and are doing just fine until corporate interests roll in, eager to take over the local mining business. The film divided audiences and critics at the time, with many critiquing its slow pace and use of symbolism, but it’s recognized today as one of the director’s best works.
18 | Blazing Saddles (1974)
By the mid-'70s, Westerns were old hat enough—and their tropes and tired story beats familiar enough—that time was ripe for a parody. And director Mel Brooks proved just the man for the job. This hilarious genre sendup stars Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder as two misfits who wind up in charge of a frontier town under threat from the ever-expanding railroads that need to cut right through the heart of the community. Loaded with anachronisms, running gags, and the most memorable sustained flatulence joke in Hollywood history, it’s funny whether you love Westerns or not.
19 | The Shootist (1976)
A fine film, but more moving as an elegy to John Wayne as a cultural icon, this 1976 film—the actor’s last before his death from lung cancer in 1979—puts Wayne in the role of gunslinger J.B. Brooks, who is grappling with a fatal cancer diagnosis and reckoning with the fallout from a life filled with violence and killing.
20 | Silverado (1985)
By the ‘80s, the traditional Western was all but dead as a genre, but director Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill) and a cast of young stars, including Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, Rosanna Arquette, Jeff Goldblum, and Kevin Costner, managed to turn this one into a hit. It’s a familiar story—a group of do-gooders comes together to protect a town from outlaws—done exceptionally well.
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21 | Dances With Wolves (1990)
Kevin Costner’s directorial debut is a Western like no other. Starring Costner as Union soldier who finds himself living among the Lakota Sioux, the acclaimed film won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, and continues to stand out for its epic scope, breathtaking cinematography, and largely sensitive portrayal of Native American people.
22 | Unforgiven (1992)
Director Clint Eastwood’s final statement on the Western as a genre, this 1992 Best Picture winner stars Eastwood as William Munny, a grizzled killer who has hung up his guns to become a farmer but is driven by revenge to settle one final score. A huge financial success and the second Western to win top honors at the Oscars in the ‘90s, it won praise from critics for deconstructing the simplistic tropes of heroes and villains and “savage” natives that defined the genre for decades.
23 | Tombstone (1993)
Decades after the heyday of the western, a group of big name stars (including Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliott, and Bill Paxton) came together for this throwback, an unabashedly entertaining recounting of the legend of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Though reasonably successful upon release, the film has become something of a cult classic, with Kilmer’s laidback turn as the gunfighter Doc Holliday earning particular acclaim.
24 | Dead Man (1995)
A decidedly arthouse take on the genre, this so-called “acid Western” from director Jim Jarmusch uses familiar imagery and themes to tell a decidedly unusual, meditative story about mild-mannered accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp), who inadvertently kills a man and must go on the run—despite the bullet in his chest, which can’t be removed without killing him, rendering him a walking dead man. He’s helped along by a strange Native man named Nobody (Gary Farmer), who believes him to be a reincarnation of the poet William Blake.
25 | The Quick and the Dead (1995)
Sam Raimi'sThe Quick and the Dead was written as a modern twist on the spaghetti Western. Sharon Stone stars as “The Lady,” a mysterious gunslinger who arrives in the town of Redemption with a vendetta. Gene Hackman plays the town’s power-hungry boss, who organizes a shooting tournament with contestants that include an early-career Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe.
