6. Open Range (2003)
Kevin Costner’s Open Range was very much a return to the roots of the Western, offering a slow-burn meditation on freedom, morality, and the rough justice of the frontier. At the time it also felt like the first mainstream old school Western to hit our screens in a long while.
Costner directs and stars alongside Robert Duvall as two cowboys who drive cattle across the open plains—and come into conflict with a corrupt land baron. The film’s deliberate pacing, combined with its stunning cinematography, gives it an almost meditative quality that sets it apart from the more action-oriented Westerns of the modern era, and frequently feels like it’s been taken straight from the pages of a Larry McMurty novel.
As you’d expect, Costner and Duvall share a warm camaraderie that feels authentic, and their relationship forms the heart of the film. It’s not just a story about two men trying to survive; it’s about two men struggling to maintain their integrity in a world that’s becoming increasingly lawless.
The film’s climactic gunfight, one of the most intense in recent Westerns, is a moment of violence that is staggering in its authenticity. It’s a culmination of the film’s quiet tension and exploration of the human spirit, meaning that you really feel and experience the battle, every gunshot makes you wince, and the realism is horrifying. Open Range is one of the best examples of a classic Western in modern cinema, and for many contains one of the all-time great shoot outs.
7. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
Tommy Lee Jones’s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) is probably one of the best films of the 2000’s, not simply one of the best Westerns. The film tells the story of Pete Perkins (Jones), a Texas rancher who kidnaps a border patrol agent after the man kills his Mexican friend, Melquiades Estrada. Pete forces the agent to help him bury Melquiades’s body in Mexico, leading them on a journey that forces both men to confront their pasts and their own moral compass.
It’s an exploration of guilt, redemption, and the invisible lines that divide people, and its non-linear structure and shifting tones make it feel fresh and unpredictable. Jones, in his first feature length directorial outing is astonishing, giving a performance that is equal parts stoic and tender, balancing the film’s darker themes with a heightened understanding of human emotion.
With a brilliant script written by Guillermo Arriaga (who also penned Amores Perros [2000] and 21 Grams [2003]), the characters are beautifully drawn and subsequently perfectly captured by the cast, especially Jones but also January Jones, unknown at the time, but who would soon go on to much bigger things.
8. Hell or High Water (2016)
Director David Mackenzie delivers a contemporary Western that captures the economic despair of modern-day America through the lens of a bank heist film. Starring Chris Pine and Ben Foster as brothers who rob banks to save their family ranch, the film blends the gritty realism of the modern world with the moral complexity of the classic Western, and it’s heaps of fun, as well as being frequently amusing, yet never veering into full comedy.
Jeff Bridges plays a grizzled Texas Ranger on their trail, and his performance provides much of the film’s dry humour and emotional weight, combining both these two traits with true excellence.
The film’s writing, by Taylor Sheridan (best known for Sicario [2015] and more recently the television series Yellowstone [2018-2024]), is sharp and incisive, reflecting the growing divide between rich and poor in America. It’s a Western that also deals with themes of poverty, survival, and justice, where the lines between good and evil are always blurry, and often crossed in the name of family loyalty.
What makes Hell or High Water stand out is its ability to combine the tropes of the Western with the social and economic realities of the modern world. It’s a film that takes the best elements of the genre—revenge, honour, and lawlessness, and sets them in a world that is a lot more relatable than your average Western. One of 2016’s finest films, Hell or High Water is a film that instantly needs to find a place on your watchlist if it hasn’t already.
9. Black ’47 (2018)
The famine in Ireland in the late 1840’s is not a subject that has often been put to film. The British Whig government’s economic policy of laissez-faire capitalism exacerbated the situation drastically, forcing already starving people to leave their homes, their only source of warmth in an already stone-cold land.
Black ’47 represents the worst of the famine; a dreadful year in 1847, and this is where Lance Daly’s film is set. The film follows Feeney (James Frecheville), an Irish soldier who deserts the British Army after witnessing the destruction of his homeland and embarks on a bloody path of vengeance against those responsible for his family’s death. Though set in Ireland, the film’s themes—of loss, retribution, and survival—are unmistakably Western in their resonance.
So Black ’47 is a Western revenge thriller but one which doesn’t take place on the American frontier; instead in the ravaged countryside of 19th-century Ireland during a truly appalling period for the Emerald Isle.
The film is brutal and visceral, with its dark themes and violent imagery underscoring the harsh realities faced by its characters. It’s a film about a man pushed to the brink by injustice, and its violent quest for vengeance mirrors the themes of lawlessness and retribution that define the Western genre, despite at first glance looking nothing like a Western in any sense of the word. It’s terrific, and a fine history lesson at the same time.
10. The Settlers (2023)
Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s debut feature is a brutal and uncompromising take on the exploitation and colonisation of Tierra del Fuego, an area that borders Chile and Argentina, at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The film follows a group of mercenaries hired to clear out Indigenous people from land being colonised by Europeans. It’s an incredibly atmospheric and unsettling drama, very violent at times and it can be particularly nasty as well. The horrors make it even more effective, and the stunning cinematography by Simone D’Arcangelo vividly depicts the setting and feel of the terrors abound. This results in searing beauty jarringly set alongside appalling brutality, and the mere ninety minutes that the film runs to at times feels longer, but certainly not in a negative way.
The film is unflinching in its portrayal of the atrocities committed against Indigenous populations, yet it’s not one-dimensional in its approach, with the characters being morally complex, and the film challenges the audience to question the traditional narrative of colonial conquest.
The Settlers is a film that doesn’t shy away from the dark history of the Western and is a great example of the genre’s capability of great depth and reflection, even when dealing with uncomfortable truths.