Westerns have been a staple of cinema since the first decade of the 20th century when The Great Train Robbery shocked and excited audiences. That first decade and a half of westerns were being made at the same time that their stories could also play out in reality. In fact, one of the best westerns of all time, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, took place in 1913.  But here, I’d like to look at neo-westerns, movies that occur in distinctly modern times or even the near future. Unlike westerns set in the 19th and early 20th centuries, these movies often don’t have the usual genre signifiers of cowboys, gunslingers, and small towns run by cattle barons. Instead, they use narrative devices and themes to identify themselves as westerns, though the visual markers may still appear.  Below you’ll find the fifteen best films the neo-western subgenre offers. Whether they be films made in the 1950s or about our post-apocalyptic future, each movie shows a distinct narrative and/or thematic interest in the quintessential western archetypes. 

1. No Country for Old Men

Based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name, No Country For Old Men is the first (and as of now only) movie to win the Coen brothers Best Picture and Best Director Oscars. The film follows Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) after he finds a satchel full of money held by a dying man in the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong.  The movie then plays out like an extended chase, a classic western narrative. Llewelyn is followed by a sociopathic hitman sent by the gangs whose money he stole and the caring lawman who hopes he can save Llewelyn before it’s too late. Along with its narrative, No Country For Old Men marks itself as a western by centering around the idea of a world that is changing and leaving behind the old men who once called it home. 

2. Hell or High Water

Like many classic westerns, Hell or High Water centers around a ranch and the family that rightfully owns it. But instead of hiring wayward gunslingers to help defend their land, brothers Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) rob the chain of banks that would repossess the ranch. It’s another film that primarily plays out like a chase, with a dedicated sheriff close on the brothers’ tail for much of the movie. And like many classic westerns, it questions the morality of legality; just because these brothers are thieves, does that make them morally irredeemable, or are they modern heroes taking on an unjust system? 

3. Logan

Some neo-westerns push “neo” beyond the modern age and look into the near future while still drawing on the same ideas that have made westerns interesting for decades. Logan, already marked as a sci-fi movie because of its world inhabited by mutants, takes place in 2029 but draws heavily on several westerns set in the old west, including Shane and Unforgiven. Logan tells the story of the titular Logan, aka Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), who escorts a young mutant to the Canadian border from Texas. Logan is quintessentially western, its plot is a chase narrative, as there are villains who want to capture the young mutant, and it’s thematically centered around the impossibility of leaving violence behind. 

4. The Rover

Another neo-western set in the near future, The Rover doesn’t give us a precise date and instead opens with on-screen text that informs us the story takes place “10 years after the Collapse.” It’s a post-apocalyptic film that’s a perfect example of why those movies are often also neo-western, as there is no law or order in the wide open spaces people inhabit in this story.  The film follows two men, Eric (Guy Pearce) and Rey (Robert Pattinson), as they journey across the barren outback in search of a gang that stole Eric’s car, including Rey’s brother. It’s an often brutal film that also offers a beautiful portrait of connection in dark times, highlighting how we must make our own meaning when surrounded by chaos. 

5. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

Another post-apocalyptic western set in the Australian outback, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, is a very different movie from The Rover. Like many classic westerns, The Road Warrior is fundamentally concerned about community and defending community in the face of outside threats.  While several of the films in the Mad Max franchise could be included here, The Road Warrior is not only the best but also tells the most quintessentially western story. The film follows Max wandering the wasteland, and (Mel Gibson) joins forces with a frontier community to help defend them against bandits. Of course, the film includes incredible car chases and stunts and some absolutely wild costume design, but at its heart, The Road Warrior is a classic western. 

6. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Tommy Lee Jones clearly loves westerns; he’s starred in several, and three of the four films he’s directed belong to the genre. Jones’s second outing as director, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, is based partly on William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and tells the story of Pete Perkins (Jones), who attempts to honor the wishes of a dead friend to be buried in his hometown.  The film’s Texas to Mexico journey and the fact that, once again, our hero is being chased by law enforcement officers mark the movie as a western. However, its political concerns about undocumented immigrants and how the American Justice system ignores them are decidedly modern. 

7. Sicario

Written by Hell or High Water scribe Taylor Sheridan, Sicario is another film that centers on the US/Mexico border. But instead of a story about friendship and honoring the wishes of the dead like the Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Sicario is a vicious movie about the horrors of the modern drug wars fought between American and Mexican law enforcement and Mexican Cartels.  The Denis Villeneuve-directed film follows FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), who is brought to collaborate on a multi-agency operation to bring down a major Cartel leader. However, she soon discovers that things are far more complicated than initially thought. Like many great westerns, Sicario draws parallels between the malleability of literal and metaphorical “borders,” those between nations, and those between right and wrong. 

8. Thelma & Louise

Along with the post-apocalyptic genre, road movies probably have the most significant overlap with neo-westerns. Long journeys through the American West have been a staple of the genre since the beginning, and things only become more archetypically western if law enforcement officers are chasing our characters down.  Thelma & Louise offers both, as well as an absolutely iconic ending at one of America’s greatest southwestern monuments: the Grand Canyon. The film, which follows two friends on the run after killing a would-be rapist, is also one of the few films that can be equally called a western and a feminist film. 

9. Natural Born Killers

Another film that follows two characters on the wide-open southwestern road, Natural Born Killers, is a movie specifically about television and its relationship to violence. Something that any film set before the 1950s, when TVs became ubiquitous, simply couldn’t be about.  The film centers on Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) Knox, who go on the run after killing Mallory’s abusive father and neglectful mother and continue to kill at every stop they make. Beyond its narrative and setting as western signifiers, Natural Born Killers is a movie about American myth-making in the same way as westerns about “the fastest gun in the West” or famous outlaws. 

10. The Lusty Men

While “neo” may lead some to think that the neo-western subgenre is only a product of the contemporary period, Classical Hollywood offered some of the best films the subgenre has ever seen. The Lusty Men, which stars frequent western star Robert Mitchum, is one of those films.  Directed by Nicholas Ray, The Lusty Men tells a story centered on rodeos and the men who perform in them. It follows Jeff (Mitchum), a professional rodeo rider who is seriously injured and becomes the trainer of Wes (Arthur Kennedy) despite Wes’s wife’s wishes that he not participate in such a dangerous sport. Like many westerns, it’s a movie about the stories men tell about themselves and how they succeed and fail to live up to those stories. 

11. The Misfits

The last film that Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable finished, The Misfits, is another example of a fantastic Classical Hollywood neo-western. The film centers on Monroe’s character, a divorcée who moves into an unfinished desert home with two men she befriends, and her relationships with the various men in the film.  Each of those men has some symbolic significance. One is an aging cowboy whose lifestyle is disappearing in a modernizing world, another is a World War II veteran who struggles with his lack of feeling about dropping bombs, and the last is a young and stubborn rodeo rider. The Misfits isn’t a subtle movie; its characters and conversations emphasize classic western themes of the loss of the frontier and the horrors of past violence, but it is beautiful and powerful. 

12. Winter’s Bone

Not all westerns are set on the plains or desert, some are set in the rough terrain of mountains, and Winter’s Bone is the best neo-western to take place in the mountains. The film, based on the novel of the same name by Daniel Woodrell, tells the story of seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), who must track down her missing father for a court date so that she and her young siblings are not evicted from the home he put up as collateral.  Winter’s Bone functions as much as a story about Ree as it does a portrait of her community, one devastated by poverty and desperation leading to significant methamphetamine production and usage. It’s a neo-western that examines a modern frontier, one that’s been largely left behind by the society that developed around it. 

13. Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts

Revenge has always been a major plot device in western fiction, and neo-westerns are no different. But Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts isn’t just a fantastic neo-western centered on revenge; it’s also a unique film that draws from spaghetti westerns to create a distinctly Indonesian cinema.  The film follows the titular Marlina (Marsha Timothy) as she embarks on a journey to report that she killed a group of bandits in self-defense. She decapitates the group’s leader and carries his head with her to prove this. The film is visually stunning, thrilling, and incisive on issues of gendered violence and structural nonchalance towards it. 

14. Revenge

Coralie Fargeat’s debut feature is very honest about what it’s about: Revenge. The film follows Jen (Matilda Lutz) seeking revenge on three men. One of whom raped her, one of whom let it happen, and one of whom was her boyfriend but decided to kill her for his rapist friend instead of seeking justice for her.  It’s a movie that’s purposefully difficult to watch but contrasts the brutality of its violence with the beauty of its stunning sun-bleached desert setting. Revenge is both an homage to and an inversion of classic revenge westerns that often see men seeking revenge for violence perpetrated against their wives or other women. But it’s more than a movie about Jen’s revenge; the film also examines how the three men interact with each other and how different forms of toxic masculinity harm everyone, even other cruel and violent men.  

15. Dead Man’s Shoes

From Australia to Indonesia, the western genre has no specific nation, and Dead Man’s Shoes shows that they aren’t tied to specific landscapes either. The film takes place in a small rural English town and its surrounding grassy and wooded areas but tells a classic western story. Richard (Paddy Considine) returns to his hometown after serving in the military. He discovers that his brother has been abused by a local gang, setting him on the path to revenge. While the movie’s visual world is often gray in contrast to other westerns (classic and neo), the story of a protector returning to a small town and taking down the criminal gang that’s done wrong in his absence is pure western.

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