IFC
Last Updated: September 26th
From the moment the bandit turned his gun toward the camera in 1903’s The Great Train Robbery, no genre of film has been more readily identified with quintessential American cinema than the Western. Though the popularity of classic Western movies waned in the late 1960s, today’s filmmakers still approach the genre with enthusiasm, breathing new life into these cinematic archetypes. Here’s a look at some of the best westerns on Netflix streaming right now.
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The Weinstein Company
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Run Time: 187 min | IMDb: 7.8/10
The Hateful Eight was originally conceived as a sequel to Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 film Django Unchained, but Tarantino almost gave up the idea of making the movie after the script leaked in early 2014. After he oversaw a live script reading in Los Angeles later that year, Tarantino changed his mind and decided to put his latest vision on the big screen. No longer a Django sequel, The Hateful Eight became a standalone story about eight strangers who take shelter at a stopover during a blizzard, all with very different reasons as to why they don’t trust one another. For the film’s score, Tarantino brought in legendary composer Ennio Morricone to do the film’s score, which won him an Academy Award.
The Weinstein Company
Wind River (2017)
Run Time: 107 min | IMDb: 7.8/10
A modern-day Western set against the backdrop of a brutal winter, Wind River stars Jeremy Renner as a US Fish & Wildlife Service agent who’s recruited into helping the FBI after he discovers the body of a young girl on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. He’s joined by a rookie FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) to try and bring the killer to justice. Writer/director Taylor Sheridan was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his work on another modern-day Western, 2016’s Hell Or High Water.
Pantelion Films
Casa de mi Padre (2012)
Run Time: 84 min | IMDb: 5.5/10
A delightful nod to embellished, Telenova-style dramas, this Spanish-language modern-day Western/comedy landed on Netflix in 2012 after an extremely limited theatrical run. It stars Will Ferrell as Armando, a man who’d spent his life working on his father’s ranch, and soon finds himself caught up in an ordeal with a local drug lord. Filmed over the course of just 21 days, this off-beat experiment received mixed reviews, while Ferrell commits himself to the role of the straight man akin to Leslie Nielsen’s performances in The Naked Gun film series.
Cannes
The Homesman (2014)
Run Time: 122 min | IMDb: 6.6/10
Tommy Lee Jones co-writes, directs, and stars as claim-jumper George Briggs in this Western based on Wesley Oliver’s 1988 novel. The story focuses on Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank), a teacher who’d left New York in search of more opportunity in the Nebraska Territory. After a particularly harsh winter, three women begin to show signs of mental illness, and the local Reverend (John Lithgow) suggests they be taken to a church in Iowa that can provide the proper care for them. The responsibility falls on Cuddy, who enlists the help of Briggs with the promise of money she has waiting for her there.
IFC
The Salvation (2014)
Run Time: 92 min | IMDb: 6.7/10
A Danish Western that brings a slightly different perspective to the tried-and-true American genre, The Salvation follows the story of two brothers, Jon and Peter (Mads Mikkelson and Mikeal Persbrandt, respectively). After emigrating to an unsettled region of the U.S. in the 1860s, Jon’s wife and son are brutally murdered by two convicts. After Jon enacts his vengeance, he finds himself at the mercy of a merciless gang leader and land baron, Henry Delarue (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).
A24
Slow West (2015)
Run Time: 84 min | IMDb: 6.9/10
Kodi Smit-McPhee plays a young Scottish man who travels from his home country to the dry, bleeding heart of the American West to find the woman he loves. Along the way, he meets a band of outlaws looking to collect the bounty on his intended’s head and a thuggish, slow-drawling Michael Fassbender who acts as his reluctant chaperone. It’s a fun, inventive take on the classic Western adventure, and it doesn’t hurt that the cinematography is gorgeous.
Entertainment Studios
Hostiles (2017)
Run Time: 134 min | IMDb: 7.2/10
This Western epic from director Scott Cooper boasts an impressive bunch of actors. Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Ben Foster, Jesse Plemmons, and Timothee Chalamet all star with Bale playing Captain Joseph J. Blocker, a veteran of the Indian Wars with a reputation and orders to escort a dying war chief back to his native lands. Along the way, he picks up Pike’s characters, a woman recently widowed thanks to a group of Comanche warriors. What follows is a slow slog through the Mid-West weighed down with brutal violence and plenty of death but the performances make it worth sticking around.
20th Century Fox
Young Guns (1988)
Run Time: 107 min | IMDb: 6.9/10
This 80’s classic featured a whos-who of action stars when it landed in theaters 30 years ago. Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, and Dermot Mulroney played a band of outlaws intent on getting revenge for the murder of their employer. Estevez served as the ringleader of the group, Billy The Kid, a man that could shoot as fast as he talked and enjoyed the spotlight. A handful of gunfights and a few dead bodies earned the gang notoriety, but when the group tries to save one of its own, things get bloody. It may not be the best Western on this list, but it’s a fun watch all the same.
Vertical
The Hollow Point (2016)
Run Time: 97 min | IMDb: 5.4/10
Patrick Wilson and Ian McShane star in this gritty crime thriller about a sheriff, who comes to a border town expecting to replace his aging colleague and ends up knee-deep in a cartel deal gone wrong. McShane is the lawman being replaced, a guy with questionable methods, while Wilson plays a newcomer with a dark past. The two face off against the cartel after busting a gun-run and things get personal when a hitman begins eliminating the people they love. It’s bleak and a bit formulaic but McShane is in it, so that’s enough of a selling point.
Universal Pictures
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)
Run Time: 75 min | IMDb: 6.5/10
The Mousekewitz family goes on another adventure in this sequel. Sure, a movie about a bunch of Jewish-Ukranian mice traveling West in search of fortune and a better life sounds strange, but then you add in a plot revolving around an aristocratic cat’s plans to turn immigrant mice into hamburgers and suddenly, things sound even more confusing. It all works though, mostly because Fievel is so damn adorable and because his sidekick Tiger provides plenty of laughs.
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