Byte Size: The Evening Redness in the Neo-Western
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I love Westerns. There’s just something about the genre that feels infinitely mutable.
After watching director Taylor Sheridan’s newest effort, Those Who Wish Me Dead (insert shameless plug here), I just had to go ahead and list out the best batch of neo-Westerns that the turn of the millennium has to offer. Enjoy.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
“What’s the most you ever saw lost on a coin toss?” Turning the works of revered author Cormac McCarthy into film is no easy task. And yet, what directors Joel and Ethan Coen achieved in adapting one of McCarthy’s most sparse and straightforward novels is nothing short of sheer cinematic brilliance. The film’s cinematography and casting decisions are spot-on, and the Coens resonate with McCarthy’s deeply subversive intuition about the decline of the American West. As Peter Travers said of the film for Rolling Stone, praising its ruthless depiction of masculinity, blood, and vengeance:
“Not since Robert Altman merged with the short stories of Raymond Carver in Short Cuts have filmmakers and author fused with such devastating impact as the Coens and McCarthy. Good and evil are tackled with a rigorous fix on the complexity involved.”
Watch the trailer here.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
No guns, just milkshakes. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, this epic period drama is loosely based Oil!, the 1927 novel by writer and political activist Upton Sinclair. Daniel Day-Lewis practically disappears within the character of Daniel Plainview on screen, a silver miner-turned-oilman with a penchant for melodrama and flights of insanity, driven mad by the promise of fortune during the Southern California oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Add in some religious zealotry and pre-industrial fearmongering, and you’ve got a picture made for the mythmaking of men. Watch the trailer here.
True Grit (2010)
I’m sneaking in another Coen Brothers joint here because… well, why not? This is my list. Deal with it. A remake of the 1969 film staring American hero John Wayne, which itself was an adaptation of the 1968 Charles Portis novel of the same name, True Grit is the pure embodiment of the ‘Revisionist Western.’ Murderous bandits. Feisty and resourceful teenagers. The mean and grizzled marshall. The idealistic Texas Ranger. A central plot motivated by revenge, money, and—of course—horse-trading. It’s all here, folks. Watch the trailer here.
Django Unchained (2012)
Throughout the 2000s, director Quentin Tarantino was winding his way back through the 20th century, spinning tales of hyperviolence and retribution from the present-day of Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 (2003-4) through to the alternate history power fantasy of Inglorious Basterds (2009). So, it made sense that Tarantino’s next venture would be a highly stylized, heavily revisionist tribute to the Italian spaghetti Westerns of the 60s and 70s, featuring a black former slave fighting for freedom and family in the depths of the pre-Civil War-era Antebellum South. It’s as entertaining as it is batshit insane. Trust me. Watch the trailer here.
Mud (2012)
Alongside No Country for Old Men, writer and director Jeff Nichols’ Mud is probably the most ‘neo’ of the Westerns listed here. Essentially a loose retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the film follows two teenage boys in rural Arkansas, who find a boat stuck in a tree on a small island in the Mississippi River. The boat’s occupant, a strange fugitive named Mud (Matthew McConaughey), promises to give the boys the boat if they help him hide on the island. While it’s mostly a coming-of-age drama, Nichols wisely suffuses the story with Southern charm and a Western sense of danger and vindictive frontier logic. Watch the trailer here.
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Yes, S. Craig Zahler is one of Hollywood’s most controversial and ~problematic~ filmmakers. Yes, Bone Tomahawk is less a revisionist Western than something that directly continues the dehumanisation of indigenous peoples and (tacitly or otherwise) endorses the project of colonisation and American Empire. I get all of that. But man… it’s also just so fucking wild to watch, with some of the most haunting imagery ever put to film. As I said in Letterboxd review:
“I’ve had more jaw-dropping, mouth agape, ‘holy shit’ moments during S. Craig Zahler films than any other director working today.”
Watch the trailer here.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Do I really have to spell this one out for you? Just look at that screenshot? No, seriously, really look at it. Drink it in. Metabolise all of its post-apocalyptic majesty. Imagine what it was like to be George Miller. Conceptualising that image, writing it into your screenplay, getting a studio to greenlight it, putting out a casting call for the role of “Coma-Doof Warrior,” and then having all of the logistics of shooting on location finally come together to create that one, brilliant shot. So, yeah…. Just watch the bloody film. Okay? Watch the trailer here.
The Revenant (2015)
There’s something wildly entertaining about Leonardo DiCaprio fighting off a grizzly bear with his bare hands. And if that concept doesn’t immediately pique your interest, then director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s sonorous, frost-bitten imagery should seal the deal. The Revenant is a harrowing portrayal of survival and revenge based on the experiences of frontiersman Hugh Glass in 1823 and author Michael Punke’s 2002 novel of the same name. It’s a film that’s stark and unflinching in its depiction of life and death on the frontier. Watch the trailer here.
Hell or High Water (2016)
The Western as a genre is intimately concerned with justice, often meditating on differing perspectives and philosophies. In the heist crime thriller Hell or High Water, writer Taylor Sheridan and director David Mackenzie transpose this conversation onto the ruined fabric of the American Dream. What does justice look like for those who have nothing to lose? How far would you go to save the last vestiges of the only life you’ve ever known, one that’s slowly slipping through your hands like the loose sands of a fading memory? Watch the trailer here.
Logan (2017)
God damn, this film just hits. It’s easily the best X-Men film in the entire twenty-year franchise. It’s also the best comic book film of the 2010s, which is saying something considering the total dominance of Disney and Marvel. And, it also happens to be one of the best neo-Westerns of the decade and—I would argue—ever. It’s grounded, affecting, resonant, and supremely entertaining with a gut-punch ending and character send-off that will absolutely destroy you. Logan is the epitome of the perfect genre film. Watch the trailer here.
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