Four smoking gun westerns to stream right now

Rough men and women, taming the wild West frontier, gun slinging and tobacco chewing. The western is a genre that has been around forever, detailing the struggles of the people who chose to make their fortune in the wildest part of a pre-industrial revolution US. While these stories often skip over the atrocities committed – not much is said regarding the cultural and actual genocide of the native American population – westerns always manage to capture the interest of moviegoers and have been staple in the film industry.

With The Harder They Fall movie released by Netflix last week, here are some suggestions for those who love ’em some gun-slinging, duel fighting at noon, horse riding, this town ain’t big enough for the both of us works out there!

Django Unchained

When it comes to revenge movies, you can truly do no wrong when going for Quentin Tarantino. Django Unchained is a 2012 reimagining of the classic spaghetti western Django, telling the story of a former slave (Jamie Foxx) turned bounty hunter so he can track down the people who took his wife. While both Foxx and mentor Christoph Waltz deliver great performances, it’s Leonardo Di Caprio’s portrayal of a deranged slave owner who steals the show. And if you liked Di Caprio’s performance you can always watch the western he did win an Oscar for (The Revenant, also on Netflix) or if you are looking for more Tarantino directed westerns, check out The Hateful Eight on Prime video.

News of the World

Tom Hanks stars as Jefferson Kyle, a former military officer in the Confederate army, who makes his living going from town to town reading people there the news from newspapers. Jefferson’s simple routine is interrupted violently when one day he finds a little girl amid the ruins of a raided wagon. Jefferson is instructed to return the girl to her family although along the way he discovers that things are not as they seem.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

This brothers Coen written and directed film is both a quintessential cowboy movie and one that you have never seen before. An anthology film, The Ballad consists of six completely unrelated vignettes telling different stories that took place in the Wild West. Swinging from comical to gritty and downright disturbing, this movie is a fan letter from the Coens to the Western genre and an extremely enjoyable watch, if at points unsatisfying. If nothing else, just to watch the talented Tim Blake Nelson (a longtime Coen brothers collaborator) play the cheerful singer/gunslinger Buster Scruggs!

The Harder They Fall

When asked to imagine a cowboy, the image conjured is usually of a man wearing a wide brimmed hat and riding a horse at sunset, with a revolver at his side. The man’s race? Why, white of course! That’s the archetype but that doesn’t mean that African American men and women weren’t present during the era known as ‘the taming of the West’. Director Jeymes Samuel sheds a spotlight on these legendary figures and imagines a parallel universe where all of them some how cross paths with each other, in a good ol’ revenge story. Jonathan Majors plays Nat Love, an outlaw who has been driven to the wrong side of a jail cell in his search for the man who killed his parents, an outlaw called Rufus Buck, played by Idris Elba. There is no shortage of African American stars in the movie, with Lakeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz, Regina King, Damon Wayans and even stand-up comedian Deon Cole sharing the screen with the two main characters. The Harder They Fall received good reviews from both critics and audiences, with special praise for Major and Elba’s performances.