10 Great Movies That Feel Like Westerns, Ranked

A Western is so much more than deserts, horses and sad cowboys. At its heart, a Western is a story about a new frontier, about an outsider in a new land, and about the battle between the willfulness of man and the indifference of nature. Sweeping vistas, stories of good versus evil, and explorations of new frontiers and untameable lands will always be magnetic and engaging cinematic elements, which accounts for part of the reason the Western genre is so enduring.

Moreover, Westerners capture the struggles of being human at their essence (they just happen to do so through the lens of the American West in the late 1800s). While many of the tropes of this genre may seem endemic to the West itself, they are endemic to the human spirit and its resilience. This is why so many films have a Western feel, despite the rarity of typical Westerns in the modern cinematic landscape.

10 ‘Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior’ (1981)

Directed by George Miller

After the total collapse of civilization and the deaths of his family, former cop Max (Mel Gibson) drives through the rugged Australian outback looking for an underdog to fight for. When he comes upon a small community of settlers who are endlessly harassed and victimized by a local gang of raiders, Max steps in to protect the community.

Australia’s most iconic and enduring film franchise embodies the Western by way of the outback. Despite being the second film in the franchise, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is the movie that put Mad Max on the map. Much of the Australian outback remains uninhabited, and as such, feels like a new frontier more hostile and inhospitable than any other. This rugged landscape and the incredibly visual storytelling of director George Miller cement Mad Max 2 as a neo-Western and science-fiction for the ages.

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9 ‘Bad Times at the El Royale’ (2018)

Directed by Drew Goddard

In 1959, a group of strangers arrived one by one at the rundown El Royale Hotel. Nestled at the border between California and Nevada, The El Royale was once a hub for wealthy guests and high-rollers. However, it has fallen into disrepair and is seldom occupied after losing its gambling license years prior. The group includes singer Darlene (Cynthia Erivo), Father Daniel (Jeff Bridges) and salesman Laramie (Jon Hamm). Throughout the evening, many guests revealed dark secrets and ulterior motives.

At the heart of the Western is the battle between old and new, and the conflict that arises when a willful protagonist encounters a frontier that seems untameable. Bad Times at the El Royale takes these central conflicts and applies them to mid-century America. As the 60s approach, the blinders are coming off for the average American. With the Free Love Movement on the horizon and the Civil Rights Movement reaching its final crescendo, there was no denying that a new frontier was approaching, and it was a cultural one. This awakening is mirrored in the El Royale. The naive charm of the once-great hotel has fallen away, and what’s left is the gritty reality of a former gambling establishment that can’t make ends meet without preying on the vices of its guests.

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8 ‘Kill Bill Vol. 2’ (2004)

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

After waking from a coma and enacting violent revenge on some of the people who put her there, The Bride (Uma Thurman) continues her quest and plans to cross off the final few names on her list. As she tracks down her former friends, now turned bitter enemies, she reflects on the choices that led to her brush with death and the grueling martial arts training she received as a young assassin.

Revenge is a common theme throughout the Western genre, so it’s no surprise that Western-lover and Kill Bill Vol. 2 director Quentin Tarantino honed in on it for both Kill Bill films. The emphasis on personal revenge and getting even feels natural in a Western, where the sheriffs are few and far between and the rule of law is tenuous at best. In this way, the assassin underworld featured in Kill Bill Vol. 2 is akin to the lawless land of a Western.

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7 ‘Nope’ (2022)

Directed by Jordan Peele

After a freak accident leaves their father dead, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Em Haywood (Keke Palmer) step up to take over the family’s business of providing trained horses for film and television shoots. At the neighboring property, former child star Jupe Park (Steven Yeun) runs a Wild West-themed amusement park and tourist attraction. After a series of strange events around the ranch, OJ and Em begin to believe that they may have witnessed alien activity, and they set out to prove it.

Nope explores the Western in both of its forms. The Haywood ranch functions as an earnest and rugged representation of the frontier spirit; a spirit which requires land to be tamed, horses to be broken in and enemies to be deterred. Conversely, Jupe’s business capitalizes on the romanticized obsession with the Old West, in the same way that Jupe capitalizes on his fame and trauma as a child star. Ultimately, Jordan Peele uses the Western and its tropes to gather together seemingly disparate ideas – the impact of cinema, the commodification of suffering, and the legacy of Black contributors in Hollywood – and unify them to great effect.

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6 ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ (2019)

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Fading Hollywood star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is desperate to revive his career, but can’t seem to book any substantial roles. He laments his status to his friend, driver and stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) on the pair’s many outings together. As Dalton and Booth go about their lives, they gradually become aware of several pieces of information. First, famed actor Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) has moved in next door to Rick. Second, a strange group of suspicious hippies have moved into the defunct western film set called Spahn Ranch.

The Wild West is over, and its resurgence in the form of the Western movie or television show is almost dead. But a new frontier of lawlessness and cultural change is here: the Free Love Movement of the late 60s. Quentin Tarantino mixes fiction and reality in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and uses the mid-century as a metaphor for the bygone era of the Wild West. The metaphor is far from subtle, as the film jumps between the modern streets of 1969 Los Angeles and the not-quite-authentic Wild West depicted in Rick Dalton’s film sets.

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5 ‘There Will Be Blood’ (2007)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

At the turn of the century, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is searching for wealth. He finds silver in New Mexico and several years later he strikes oil in California. When an oil worker is killed in an accident, Daniel adopts the man’s orphaned son, and the boy becomes a key part of Daniel’s ruthless and never-ending search for oil and the money that comes with it.

There Will Be Blood exists at the edges of a number of genres. Its turn-of-the-century setting and arid West Coast backdrops evoke Western ruggedness, but it isn’t quite a Western. Its exploration of one man’s ruthless character and obsession positions it as a dramatic character piece, but that doesn’t exactly do it justice. Like director Paul Thomas Anderson‘s other work, There Will Be Blood is uninterested in being confined or defined, and instead functions as a vicious and epic exploration of the darkness of American ambition.

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4 ‘Minari’ (2020)

Directed by Lee Isaac Chung

In the early 80s, the Yi family moved from Korea to rural Arkansas to start a new life. The patriarch of the family, Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) is determined to work the land and grow Korean produce to sell to local grocers. Despite Jacob’s doggedness, life in Arkansas is an uphill battle. The family has trouble adjusting to the rural life, their mobile home and being strangers to the small community they now live within.

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​Minari is charming, endearing and a beautiful love letter to the immigrant spirit. For those who immigrated to new places, or whose parents immigrated to give them more opportunities, Minari will feel as familiar as it does bittersweet. American media, and particularly the Western, romanticizes individual struggle as well as the idealized notion of a frontiersman. In modern-day America, where all the soil has been tilled and all the land conquered, the immigrant is the new frontiersman, and their stories are the new westerns.

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3 ‘Blue Ruin’ (2013)

Directed by Jeremy Saulnier

Dwight (Macon Blair) has fallen on hard times, and he is living out of his car when he gets a shocking piece of news. Dwight learns that the man who murdered his parents 20 years earlier is getting out of prison. Without much to lose, Dwight decides that he is going to get revenge and kill the man who took so much from him. However, things don’t quite go to plan.

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Blue Ruin was funded in part by director Jeremy Saulnier and in part by a modest but successful Kickstarter campaign for $35,000. Lifelong friends, Macon Blair and Jeremy Saulnier made Blue Ruin as a last hurrah, believing that their dreams of finding success as filmmakers were over. Thankfully for audiences, the success of this quiet and contemplative film would lead to the pair to go on to collaborate on films like Green Room and Hold the Dark. Like the best westerns, Blue Ruin‘s simplicity is what makes it shine. At its heart, the film is the story of a man, his horse (or in this case, his blue Pontiac Bonneville) and his single-minded desire for revenge.

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2 ‘Sicario’ (2015)

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

FBI Special Agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is infiltrating a cartel safe house in Arizona when a booby trap bomb triggers at the scene and kills several of her colleagues. In the aftermath of the bombing, Kate is invited to take part in a joint task-force run by the CIA. The task-force is led by CIA Officer Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and supported by Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro), a CIA-sanctioned assassin. Kate’s desire to get justice for her slain colleagues is at odds with some of the methods implemented by the task-force, and as she continues her work her faith in her office is shaken.

Cops and outlaws are replaced by the CIA and the Cartels in Sicario, a ruthless action-thriller where there are no clear delineations between the hero and the villain. While the sweeping desert vistas of Arizona, the sparse brutality of the Mexican-American border, and the dense and lively streets of Juárez share a visual language with the westerns of old, the rest of Sicario is much more complicated. The film by director Denis Villeneuve and writer Taylor Sheridan is a eulogy to the naive notions of justice, fairness and right and wrong that westerns are famous for. In a world of forever-wars, vitriolic geopolitics and state-sponsored provocateurs, Sicario represents the cynical and grimy reality of modern conflict.

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1 ‘Logan’ (2017)

Directed by James Mangold

Logan (Hugh Jackman) is a long way from the X-Men and his past as Wolverine. Working as a limo driver and caring for an aging and ill Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Logan’s glory days are well and truly behind him. A series of troubling events leads Logan to a young mutant named Laura (Dafne Keen) who needs his help. Logan escorts Laura across the country looking for a safe place for her to hide from the dangerous corporate entity that’s in pursuit.

​​​​Logan is massively influenced by the Western genre and leans into some of the genre’s most iconic tropes. Set throughout the scarcely populated highways of Oklahoma and the South Central United States, Logan casts rural America as a lonely land that time left behind. Like many reluctant Western heroes, Logan is disenchanted with his present life and Laura functions as a spark that motivates him to find a new frontier. The combination of Western vibes, hardcore action, and a superhero reckoning with his place in the world culminate in a savagely poignant and moving film. While Logan was intended as an end to Hugh Jackman’s years-long role as Wolverine, the actor will don the adamantium claws once again in Deadpool & Wolverine in 2024.

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