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The Western has given the 21st century some of its greatest films, with the 2010s serving up an assortment of essential R-rated masterpieces. From both established, A-list directors and indie creators alike, the era is something of a hidden gem for lovers of classics like Tombstone and Unforgiven. As the 2020s struggle to find their footing with Hollywood's most underrated genre, the last decade can point the way.
The 2010s saw the Western fighting an uphill battle, both at the box office and in mainstream recognition, like never before. However, that didn't stop it from breaking box office records, winning awards, and inspiring fresh projects. As easy as it would be to dismiss the decade for its lower output, some R-rated masterpieces prove the Wild West is still viable among modern audiences.
Bone Tomahawk Is the Perfect Blend of Western and Horror
Horror and Westerns have long gone together, but few movies perfected the blend quite as well as Bone Tomahawk. Starring Kurt Russell as Sheriff Hunt, a lawman leading a small posse against a lost tribe of cannibal Native Americans, it raised the bar for brutality on the frontier. As their trek across the wilderness continues, they're confronted with unspeakable violence that culminates in a blood-soaked rescue mission.
Coming together like a more focused yet horrific modernization of John Ford's The Searchers, Bone Tomahawk lives up to its R rating and then some. Easily the most unforgiving story of its kind since the '60s, it's hard to imagine it being beaten on the brutality front any time soon. Directed by S. Craig Zahler, what it lost at the box office, it more than made up for as one of the most-seen cult classics of the 2010s.
The Hateful Eight Is A Wild West Whodunit
After his record-breaking success with Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino crafted a very different brand of Western in The Hateful Eight. Released in 2015, it follows the arrival of eight strangers to a remote cabin in the midst of a blizzard, including a bounty hunter and his prisoner. When the gunslinger is poisoned, it falls to the survivors to try and figure out who among them is the murderer.
Tarantino's personal love letter to mystery Western shows like The Virginian, The Hateful Eight takes the premise of John Carpenter's The Thing and transforms it into a whodunit. Packed full of more tension than the typical gunslinger flick, it pushes its audience to try and solve the mystery before its contemptible antiheroes. Playing to one of the oldest traditions in the book, it refuses to offer up any true good guys, instead highlighting the moral ambiguity of a good revisionist piece.
Hostiles Uses Violence to Deconstruct Prejudice
Hostiles follows the journey of an American Indian Wars veteran, Joseph Blocker, to escort a dying Native American chief named Yellow Hawk to his ancestral lands. Along the way to Wyoming, their party encounters a Comanche war party, rapacious hunters, and a dangerous criminal. As their situation grows from bad to worse, the two rivals gradually overcome their prejudice towards each other for common survival.
A film that deconstructs racism in the Old West, Hostiles is a statement that deserves to be recognized alongside Clint Eastwood gems like Unforgiven or High Plains Drifter. In many ways, it was what Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga tried to be, telling a fundamentally American frontier story that pulls no punches. The phenomenal cast makes this already great movie a masterpiece, and it's a merciless examination of prejudice that deserves much more love.
Hell or High Water Is the Quintessential Neo-Western
In 2016, David Mackenzie directed the second entry in Taylor Sheridan's "New American Frontier" trilogy when he made Hell or High Water. A contemporary thriller styled after the classic West, it follows an old-fashioned crime caper as brothers Toby and Tanner Howard rob Texan banks to try to pay off their family land. When a pair of aged Texas Rangers are assigned the case, they're set on a deadly collision course with the pair of outlaws.
Hell or High Water is the perfect modern Western, showing that, no matter how much the world moves on, its themes are timeless. A story about land, legacy, and self-determination, it doesn't hold back in its depiction of the violence necessary for people to hold onto what's theirs. Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine both shine as unrelenting men on opposite sides of the law, almost making it the Heat of the neo-Western movement.
Django Unchained Was the Modern Spaghetti Western Fans Needed
In 2012, Quentin Tarantino officially entered the Western genre when he made Django Unchained, his own Spaghetti Western crafted in the vein of a Sergio Corbucci flick. Using one of the greatest '60s gunslinger names, it follows Django as he's liberated from slavery by German bounty hunter King Schultz. Together, they embark on a quest to rescue his slave from the vile Candyland plantation.
As any true Tarantino fan would expect, his 2012 gunslinger epic is packed full of enough shooting, blood, and swearing to earn its R rating in the first 10 minutes. Compared to Corbucci's Django in 1966, this feels like an unrestrained celebration of violence and revenge that would make Franco Nero's antihero blush. Since it smashed box office records 14 years ago, Django Unchained has remained the most delightfully excessive essential R-rated Western of the 2010s.
