Ten Western films everyone should see

Some people love all things Western. Any time any Western movie or classic Western TV show comes on, they'll watch it, whether it's "The Lone Ranger," "Gunsmoke," or "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly." Other people want noithing to do with them, thinking they're all the same - singing cowboys, or cowboys fighting Native Americans, or guys in white hats fighting guys with black hats over a blonde woman in petticoats. But that's not true. Here are 10 Westerns everyone should see, some that are like no others.

1. Unforgiven

This multiple Oscar-winning film has an outstanding cast of Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris, and Gene Hackman, all acting at the top of their game, and it's one of my top three favorite movies of all time. It's not a plain and simple Western, it's a morality play showing that sometimes everyone involved in a situation is wrong, and things are frequenlty not as simple as they would seem to be. The film begins when a ranch hand cuts the face of a prostitute who insulted him. Not satisfied with the sentence given to the man and his friend by the local sheriff (Hackman), the prostitute's friends pool their money and offer it as a reward to anyone who will kill the men. This brings would-be assassins and gunmen from all around, despite a "no guns in town limits" policy initiated by the sheriff, who himself is a former gunslinger trying to retire into a quiet normal life. English Bob (Harris) is one of the gunslinges drawn by the reward, and he travels with a writer, who publishes stories Bob retells of his legendary deeds. Over the course of the film the writer encountes the sherriff, as well as former outlaws Eastwood and Freeman, learning from them their version of what really happened in the old days, as another chapter of Western legend unfolds before them.

2. High Plains Drifter

A lot of classic Westerns center on revenge. Someone shot someone's father, or brother, or they cheated them, or they stole their land, or they stole their girl. But there has never been a revenge film quite like this. Clint Eastwood stars as a drifter who comes into a town that's terrified of a band of outlaws who will soon be coming back. Eastwood tells the mayor he can protect the town, but everyone will have to agree to do what he says and give him what he wants. The mayor makes the agreement, and the stranger starts to train them to fight for themselves to defend their town, but not everything he wants is as simple as rifles and red paint. He takes away the mayor's job, and takes away another man's wife. At the same time, we see flashbacks to a night in the recent past when an unnamed deputy marshal is brutally whipped to death in the center of town by the outlaws, with some of the town's citizens as witness. It becomes apparent that while the stranger intends to stop the outlaws who are coming, he also intends to set things right in or take vengeance on the town as a whole.

3. True Grit (2010)

Some Western puritsts only appreciate the original film starring John Wayne, which is one of his best. I do like that one, but this one is a clear preference starting with one key reason: The title song that plays during the original film, sung by Glen Campbell, who co-stars in the film. I like Glen Campbell just fine. "Rhinestone Cowboy" was my first favorite song as a child. But the song in that film is annoying. Take that out and put Matt Damon in Campbell's role, and you have a much better film. Granted, it can be very hard to replace John Wayne in a signature role, but Jeff Bridges does a fine, fine job, making the role of Rooster Cogburn his own, with the added starpower of Josh Brolin as the villain.

The film is about a girl who comes to a small Western town to claim the body of her father after he was killed by a hired hand. She asks the local sheriff what's being done to bring the killer to justice, and she's told the man and his friend probably headed off into Indian Territory, which is outside the jurisdiction of local law enforcement. So the girl goes about hiring a Deputy US Marshall to do the job, because that is within their jurisdiction. The sheriff suggests three of them, and the girl chooses Cogburn, who is described as the meanest of the three. Together the girl and the irascible, frequently drunk Cogburn set off, and while protecting her from the dangers on the trail, Cogburn finds himself being tamed by the girl, despite his efforts to the contrary.

4. The Magnificent Seven

Based on the film "The Seven Samurai," this film features the all-star cast of Steve MQueen, Yul Brynner, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, and Charles Bronson as a group of gunfighters hired by a small Mexican town to protect them from a gang of bandits. The gunfighters fortify the town and train the people as part of their job, but as they live among them they begin to realize they want to help them because it's right, not because it's a job. It also becomes clear that not all of them are the skilled, brave fighters they claimed to be.

5. The Shootist

You may see a recurring theme with some of these films, and that's an amazing cast. Consider what you may have thought of of Westerns in the past: Dime-a-dozen films where you recognize one or two stars and everyone else in the film is either nobody you'll see again or a character actor who was in every Western film and tv show, playing a bartender, ranch hand, farmer, and if they were lucky a sidekick. The films on this list are different. These films drew attention from major actors - many at a time, because the stories were different and the films were going to be significant. This is again one of those films, for both reasons. The cast is stunning. Harry Morgan, in between doing "Dragnet" and "M*A*S*H," Ron Howard, who was already in "American Grafitti" and other films and was at the time starring on "Happy Days." Scatman Crothers right before he did "The Shining." Two legends in bit parts, Jimmy Stewart and John Carradine, and two more in the lead, Lauren Bacall and John Wayne, in what everyone knew would likely be one of his final films.

Fittingly, Wayne plays a legendary gun fighter who finds he has terminal cancer. He decides to spend his last days quietly in a small town, living in a boarding house run by a widower (Bacall). Her teenage son (Howard) says he wants to be a gunfighter himself one day, and so he begins to learn to show, and hear stories of glory. Wayne's character tells him being a shootist isn't all glory. You're always worried someone is going to shoot you in the back, and you have the memories of all those you killed or lost to haunt you at night. At the same time it seems dying quietly may not be an option for him, nor does it seem to be his plan.

6. The Quick and the Dead

Directed by Sam Raimi, this film stars Sharon Stone, still hot after her star-making turn in "Basic Instinct," Gene Hackman, not long after "Unforgiven," a young Leonardo DiCaprio, and Russell Crowe in his first US film appearance. Stone plays a woman who comes to a small town to compete in the annual quick draw competition. Anyone can join, but each contestant must compete once a day, no one can refuse to compete, and each fight is to the finish. The champion wins a large cash reward. Stone's character is secretly there to avenge the death of her father, who was likely killed by Hackman, who is the perennial champion who also runs the town. DiCaprio is a young man competing for reasons of his own, while Crowe plays a former deadly gunslinger turned pacifist preacher who is being forced to compete or die.

What makes the movie stand out is obviously having Stone as the lead. There are very few female-centric Westerns. But what makes it good is that the film isn't preachy or heavy-handed about it. She's there to compete like everyone else.

7. The Cowboys

Another recurring theme in the films in this list is plot, frequently centering on vengeance or protection. Which is why this film is different. John Wayne plays a trail boss hired to move a head of cattle to market, but he can't find any men for a crew. So he hires a group of boys, some in their teens, some just boys. to be his crew, with the intent of training them along the way. A group of cattle rustlers folllows them, thinking it would be easy to steal cows from one man and a bunch of kids.

Not only is the film noteworthy for the plot, but also the cast and the outcome. Many of the boys who acted in the film greatly enjoyed working with Wayne, who took them under his wing while on set. Some claim it changed their lives and they were forever inspired by him. At the same time (SPOILERS) this is one of the few films in which Wayne's character dies. And Bruce Dern, the actor who played the character who shot Wayne in the film, says as a result people sent him hate mail and even threatened him for many years.

8. Lonesome Dove

This entry is an exception to the rest of the list because it was a TV mini-series, not a big screen film. But it does deserve its place, because it must be seen. Based on the best-selling novel by Larry McMurtry, the novel and the mini-series spawned several sequels and prequels, but none had the same amazing cast or impact as the original, which stars Angelica Huston, Tommy Lee Jones, Diane Lane, Robert Duvall, Rick Schroeder, Danny Glover, and Robert Urich. Duvall and Jones play legnedary Texas Rangers who have settled in the small town of Lonesome Dove, Texas, where they are business partners. An old colleague comes to town, telling them about ranching in the newly settled territory of Montana. The rangers decide they're going to take one last shot at fortune and adventure by taking a herdo of cattle to Montana, but there are old enemies along the way, as well as new ones, and trouble from people they thought were friends.

9. Cat Ballou

There's no other film quite like this. A comedy-Western with musical bits by the legendary Nat King linking different scenes, if you don't like Westerns, you'll like this one. If you don't like Musicals, it really isn't one. If you don't like Jane Fonda films, you'll like this one. Fonda plays Catherine Ballou, a school teacher who comes to a town to avenge the killing of her father by the corrupt miner (Lee Marvin) who runs the town. She realizes she can't get the job done on her own, so she hires a legendary gunman (also Lee Marvin) to help, only to find when he arrives that he's a broken-down drunk so out of shape, even his horse can't stand up straight. My mom doesn't like Westerns or Jane Fonda, but she watches this film every time it comes on, all the way through.

10. Tombstone

Possibly the best of them all, this film provides not only the most accurate depiction of the legendary Gunfight at the O.K. Corral seen to date, but also shows what happened before and after that encounter, which was actually an extended struggling to bring order to the town of Tombstone, Arizona. Starring Sam Elliott, Kurt Russell, Dana Delaney, Bill Paxton, Val Kilmer, and others, Kilmer steals the film in his incredible portrayal of anti-hero Doc Holliday, though there's no doubt your jaw will drop as you watch the scene of Wyatt Earp (Russell), unarmed, disarming and repeatedly slapping an armed, bullying card dealer (played by Billy Bob Thornton) while snarling, "Are you going to do something, or just stand there and bleed?"