If a movie is a crowd-pleaser, then it’s probably something of a blockbuster, or at least it’s the kind of smaller movie that’s going to be broadly appealing. Raiders of the Lost Ark or maybe Star Wars (at least the good ones, concerning the latter) are probably the best examples of full-on crowd-pleasers, being the kinds of films just about everyone seems to like, but as for Westerns that fit into this category…
…Honestly, they’re a little less common. Not everyone likes Westerns, a bit like how not everyone gets on board with the musical genre, and perhaps comparable to how some people just aren’t fans of horror movies. But, if you wanted to convert someone who says they’re not a Western fan, the following films might well do the trick, because they are all pretty easy to appreciate and/or enjoy.
10
‘Dances with Wolves’ (1990)
Dances with Wolves is a massive movie, clocking in at one minute over three hours in total, and even longer if you watch the extended cut (much longer, actually, since that one’s almost four hours all up). It’s a movie that takes place during the Civil War, even if the Civil War isn’t really the focus, being about a wounded Union army soldier falling in with a tribe of Sioux people.
Yes, it’s got that classic narrative of “individual from one culture gets wrapped up in another culture and ends up fighting for them,” but it’s a good sort of story, and Dances with Wolves tells it well. It’s also an easy one to select for present purposes, since it was indeed popular when it came to both the box office and awards seasons (it was the biggest and most prominent Oscar winner of its year).
9
‘For a Few Dollars More’ (1965)
The Dollars trilogy began in 1964, with A Fistful of Dollars, and it’s worthy of an honorable mention here, even if it’s not quite as entertaining as the two movies that came later. The second of the trilogy was For a Few Dollars More, which is tied to A Fistful of Dollars because of the people involved (notably, Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood, and Ennio Morricone), but is otherwise its own story, with the biggest connection being that Eastwood is the Man with No Name… or a Man with No Name. Probably the same one.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter too much, and what matters more is how great For a Few Dollars More is, not to mention quite the upgrade quality-wise on A Fistful of Dollars. It’s about a pair of bounty hunters pursuing the same notorious criminal for very different reasons, and it all ends in an incredibly satisfying and memorable way.
8
‘The Good, the Bad, the Weird’ (2008)
Not to be mixed up with another movie in the Dollars trilogy (which itself will get mentioned later), The Good, the Bad, the Weird… okay, it does have the premise you’d expect it to. It’s got that whole The Good, the Bad and the Ugly premise of three chaotic characters competing with each other to find treasure somewhere in the desert, but it distinguishes itself tonally and pacing-wise, not to mention in terms of what genres it tackles.
See, The Good, the Bad, the Weird is more of a broad action/comedy than the film it’s paying homage to, and that does make it incredibly fun. So, why isn’t it more crowd-pleasing? Well, The Good, the Bad, the Weird is also very cynical and kind of downbeat in some ways, alongside all the fun and wacky stuff that happens, so you sort of have to dock a few points, if you’re assessing how much of a conventional crowd-pleaser it is, or can be.
7
‘Django Unchained’ (2012)
While there are quite a few Quentin Tarantino movies that play around with time, Django Unchained isn’t really one of them, instead being relentlessly straightforward and even a bit linear. But linear does not equal bad, since there’s a lot of excitement and catharsis here with a story about a freed slave teaming up with a bounty hunter to rescue his wife and also enact vengeance upon those who abused him while he was enslaved.
It’s heavy subject matter for sure, and parts of Django Unchained are appropriately grim and emotionally intense, though much of the film is entertaining, with the revenge/rescue quest being easy to get wrapped up in. Django Unchained is quite thrilling and funny at times, balancing all that stuff with the more serious dramatic side of things fairly well, overall. It’s certainly more conventional and crowd-pleasing than Tarantino’s later Western (The Hateful Eight), that’s for sure.
6
‘The Magnificent Seven’ (1960)
There was a little movie in 1954 called Seven Samurai that actually wasn’t a little movie at all, and was instead one of the all-time greatest samurai/martial arts films ever, and also an all-timer as an action epic, too. Its influence was felt well beyond the genre(s) it belonged to, seeing as it was remade as a Western, with The Magnificent Seven, all before being remixed, referenced, and parodied by all sorts of other movies later on.
To focus on The Magnificent Seven, though, it’s got the Seven Samurai premise and structure of assembling a team, preparing for conflict, and then taking part in a large-scale fight, but with gunfighters and a Western setting instead of taking place in Japan during samurai times. And sure, it’s not as good as Seven Samurai, but not much is. As far as remakes go, it really gets the job done, and holds up pretty darn well for a film of its age.
5
‘Tombstone’ (1993)
Whatever the online equivalent of riots in the streets is, that would be happening right about now if Tombstone were not included here. If anything, some might consider it not high enough, but hey, top 5 is pretty great for something that’s trying to look at all-time greats. Certainly, this much can be said about Tombstone: it’s the greatest of all the movies about Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which is saying quite a bit, since all that stuff’s been well-represented and depicted throughout cinema history.
With Tombstone, it’s all done with incredible confidence and style, all the while having one of the best casts of any Western movie perhaps ever made, so that helps a great deal, too. It’s an overall good time, hitting all the beats it needs to emotionally and being another Western crowd-pleaser that’s hard to find much at all at fault with.
4
‘Blazing Saddles’ (1974)
Okay, sure, if you’re a Western purist to the extent that you don’t like anything that makes fun of old-fashioned Westerns, maybe you’ll take issue with Blazing Saddles, but if you’re open to a Western comedy that’s kind of a parody of the whole genre, it’s the textbook definition of an essential watch. For what it’s worth, it also replicates the feel of the Western genre quite well (not as uncannily as Young Frankenstein did for old horror movies, which was a film Mel Brooks also directed, and somehow, both it and Blazing Saddles even came out the same year).
Blazing Saddles is also a great satirical work, exploring some serious stuff in a thoroughly unserious and chaotic way. It’s clever all around, and is so relentless with its jokes. The quantity is backed up with quality, too, since far more attempts at humor in Blazing Saddles land rather than miss.
3
‘Rio Bravo’ (1959)
While The Searchers might be the best Western John Wayne ever starred in, and there’s an argument to be made that Stagecoach is the most important (at least on a historical front), Rio Bravo is probably Wayne’s most entertaining Western. It was the film so nice that Wayne and director Howard Hawks sort of made it twice, as El Dorado (1966) is pretty similar, in a fair few ways.
Rio Bravo moves well for a movie that nears 2.5 hours in length, and contains quite a bit of action.
And El Dorado is also a good time, but Rio Bravo’s the one that’s hard to top. It’s about an unlikely group of characters (or “heroes,” if you’re willing to stretch the definition of the word a bit) banding together to keep a criminal in jail while said criminal’s brother is trying to get him out. It moves well for a movie that nears 2.5 hours in length, and contains quite a bit of action and humor alongside the more expected Western and drama beats.
2
‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ (1969)
Since it kind of counts as an adventure movie and a buddy comedy (plus some other things), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is pretty easy to recommend, even to Western genre naysayers. It’s just such a likable film about a pair of outlaws that make a ton of enemies, and end up having to go on the run, fleeing to South America, yet still finding further troubles there… or troubles wherever they go, pretty much, it might be more accurate to say.
So much of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid works because Paul Newman and Robert Redford are a match made in charisma heaven, and watching them both alternate between stumbling and swaggering through an Old West that’s rapidly becoming not so “Old” anymore is extremely entertaining. Beyond Newman and Redford, the soundtrack’s also very memorable, and William Goldman’s impeccable screenplay is one of his very best.
1
‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966)
It’s hard to imagine another movie going here. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly might well be the definitive Western, and it’s a contender for the title of the genre’s most entertaining movie, too. It’s one of those films that’s so good, it is likely to flat-out convert you to the Western genre, largely thanks to how well it builds throughout pacing-wise, and also how timeless so much of it feels.
If you break down what happens in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, it might not sound like much (especially for a film that’s almost three hours long), but it’s the execution here that counts. It’s such a great-looking movie, the characters are all so memorable, it’s remarkably quotable, and it also easily has one of the best scores of all time. It’s hard to fault, and that’s why it’s worthy of being #1 here.
