image from Unforgiven

Top 25 Westerns

This list of the best Westerns ever made was compiled by aggregating multiple best-of lists (see resources at bottom of page) along with films’ overall status in Dave’s Movie Database. Note: True Grit appears twice on this list – the 1969 original and the 2010 remake – so they are listed as one entry.

1. Unforgiven (1992)
2. High Moon (1952)
3. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
4. The Searchers (1956)
5. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

6. The Wild Bunch (1969)
7. Red River (1948)
8. Once Upon a Time in the West (C’era Una Volta Il West) (1968)
9. Stagecoach (1939)
10. The Magnificent Seven (1960)

11. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
12. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
13. Shane (1953)
14. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
15. Rio Bravo (1959)

16. True Grit (1969) / True Grit (2010)
17. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
18. Dances with Wolves (1990)
19. My Darling Clementine (1946)
20. A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

21. The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
22. Blazing Saddles (1974)
23. Tombstone (1993)
24. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
25. No Country for Old Men (2007)

Resources:

Dave’s Movie Database: Genre Lists
ABC News/People Magazine (3/22/2011). “Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time” (includes top 5 westerns)
American Film Institute (2016). “Top 10 Westerns”
ArtOfManliness.com (6/4/2013). “The 17 Best Western Movies”
BusinessInsider.com (9/23/2016). “The 11 greatest Westerns of all time, ranked”
Complex.com (5/17/2017). “The Best Western Movies”
CountryLiving.com (5/25/2019). “The 15 Best Western Movies of All Time”
CowboyLifestyle.com (7/27/2018). “Top 10 Best Western Movies of All Time”
GrizzlyRose.com (10/9/2018). “Top Rated Western Movies”
TheGuardian.com “Top 10 westerns”
Guinness Book of Film (1999). “The Top 100 Films by Genre Type” (includes top 5 westerns)
HiConsumption.com (10/9/2014). “The 25 Greatest Western Movies of All Time”
Independent.co.uk (2/22/2019). “The Magnificent 20: The best western films of all time”
Most-Wanted-Western-Movies.com (2011). “Top 20 Classic Western Movies”
Newsweek (9/5/2018). “The Best Western Movies of All Time, According to Critics and Audiences”
Norman, Barry (1993). “100 Greatest Films of All Time” (includes top 10 westerns)
Paste magazine (6/20/2016). “The 100 Best Western Movies of All Time”
Ranker.com “The Best Western Movies Ever Made”
RottenTomatoes.com “Top 100 Western Movies”
TasteOfCinema.com (5/11/2014). “The 30 Best Western Movies of All Time”
TVovermind.com (2018). “The 20 Best Western Movies Ever Made”

Originally posted 9/2/2019; last updated 5/25/2023.

Unforgiven

Released: August 3, 1992

Studio: Warner Bros.

Genre: drama/western

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 101.16 Worldwide: ?

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: 205.50 Worldwide: ?

Directing: Clint Eastwood

Screenwriting: David Webb Peoples

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Jaimz Woolvett

Review:

This was actor and director Clint Eastwood’s “magnificent Western masterpiece,” ^FS finding him “returning to the very genre that made him famous.” ^MSN It took him “a career to make [but it] was well worth the wait.” ^RS

Eastwood was “able to contemporize the genre” ^MSN with this “revisionist western” ^RS “noted for challenging the morality of Western stereotypes created by American film.” ^A07 The movie “deals with the psychological impact of killing.” ^MSN

Eastwood plays “a retired, poor, notorious ex-bounty hunter William Munny.” ^FS The “formerly notorious gunslinger” ^A07 is now a hog farmer, but is “forced to return to his murderous ways after his wife dies and his family needs money.” ^A07

“In the 1880s frontier town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming, a prostitute’s face has been brutally slashed by vicious cowboys, and her fellow co-workers have raised a $500 bounty. Joined by former sidekick partner Ned Logan (Freeman) and aspiring, cocky gunfighter ‘The Schofield Kid’ (Woolvett), they journey to the town to confront the corrupt, sadistic and autocratic Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett (Hackman), who has denied justice to the brothel’s women. In a deadly and bloody showdown, Munny’s nihilistic past is graphically brought back.” ^FS