Time was when Western movies were predictable, formulaic, superficial, and stereotypical. They filled the same public need as comfort food. Consider the Gary Cooper classic High Noon (1952) in which the actor plays a sheriff of unimpeachable moral rectitude. Or picture an all-American cowboy hero like John Wayne or Gene Autry in horseback, galloping into a troubled frontier town to fend off nasty interlopers. The heroes of these films represented values we typically celebrate - unswerving honesty, fearlessness, patriotism, valor, and integrity. The paradigm was strictly good versus bad, with no gray area in between.
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Times have changed a lot for Western-themed cinema. You could argue that the seismic shift began in the 1990s with lauded masterpieces such as Dances With Wolves (1990) and Unforgiven (1992). Both won Academy Awards for Best Picture, a great rarity for Westerns. (Only four, including these two, have ever nabbed this top prize.) In both cases, the star was also the director (Kevin Costner and Clint Eastwood, respectively.)
Revisionist and Neo-Westerns Break the Traditional Mold
Subsequent films in the genre have ushered it into this century. They tinker with the standard mythology, showcase modern settings, and keep us riveted due to their characters' moral complexity. We revisit three of the finest examples. They are No Country for Old Men, Killers of the Flower Moon, and 3:10 to Yuma. Each was directed by a visionary with the guts to think outside the box.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
If you have ever seen a film by the Coen brothers such as Fargo (1996), then you know they specialize in the weirdly offbeat verging on bizarre. No Country for Old Men is a prime example. The plot is simple. And horrifically gripping. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, it takes place in West Texas in 1980. The landscape feels oddly tense and forbidding, and with good reason.
Llewelyn Moss, played by Josh Brolin, stumbles across the remains of a drug deal that went sideways. Among the bodies he discovers $2 million. He grabs it, becoming the target of a bounty hunter (Woody Harrelson) and a sinister hit man (Javier Bardem). Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) also jumps into the fray.
A New Kind of Psycho Villain
Bardem's character, Anton Chigurh, is stealthy and conscienceless. He kills without any outward affect, a particle of guilt, or even homicidal glee. Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock combined could not have thought Chigurh up. Sometimes, he casually flips a coin to decide if his hapless victims live or die.
This new kind of psycho villain looks different, too. He's no clean-cut evildoer. Chigurh's dark, pageboy-style coif was "inspired by the styles sported by English warriors during the Crusades and 1960s mod cuts," per Farout Magazine. It renders Chigurh even more hulking, lethal, and ominous.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
James Mangold helmed the acclaimed Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash biopics A Complete Unknown and Walk the Line, respectively. In 3:10 to Yuma, a finely nuanced reboot of the 1957 film starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin, director Mangold throws two compelling characters together. They are struggling rancher Dan Evans, played by Christian Bale, and Ben Wade, a cunning outlaw who must be brought to justice for his crimes.
Russell Crowe expertly brings Wade to life. According to collider.com, "Wade is arguably one of the most complex villains in the Western genre to date," a far cry from the cardboard interpretations of lawbreakers in many Westerns of years past.
Also, this is not a hopelessly whitewashed, Hollywood-style version of life on the range. It's gritty and raw, which is more attuned to what a modern audience would expect.
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Director Martin Scorsese turned his storytelling prowess to 1920s Oklahoma, where members of the Osage Nation were being killed by whites because of the rich deposits of oil beneath their land. It is a complex tapestry of injustice, greed, corruption, morality (and lack thereof), and of a people being grievously wronged. Featuring an outstanding cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, and Robert De Niro, Killers presented a story that all of us needed to know and grapple with. It is a tragic chapter of our modern frontier heritage that Scorsese put front and center before us, minus Tinseltown artifice and in all its horrific wretchedness.
