re: Top 3 favorite westerns excluding tombstone

1.Unforgiven
2.The Missing (criminally underrated)
3.Open Range
other great ones:
Two Mules For Sister Sarah
True Grit (remake)
How The West Was Won

Silverado
Unforgiven
The Wild Bunch

quote:

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The man who shot liberty valance

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Glad I wasn’t the only one to pick this. One of the best films ever made!

Tombstone
Open Range
Silverado

Unforgiven
No Country for Old Men
Dances with Wolves

I asked my 72 yo dad because ever since I was a kid he was always watching westerns, especially with The Duke in them. I love westerns because of him.

Right out the gate were:
The Searchers
Shane
Then he talked about True Grit, Magnificent Seven, Josey Wales, and a few others but he landed on Unforgiven as his #3. He said that was an amazing movie and such great performances by Clint and Hackman.

For me it's
Unforgiven
OJW
3rd is hard but I'll say Open Range

Old Henry

Impossible to answer. The western is my favorite genre and there are way too many.to rank. I'll say this

John Ford is the father of the American Western. Pick a film. They are all classics. The Searchers and Stagecoach are perfect films. John Wayne is as American a product as baseball and apple pie. Early westerns are all influenced by Ford as is the American action hero genre. Tombstone was arguably a better film than Clementine, but Ford would say his version is more accurate because Wyatt Earp personally told him the story.

Another group is the Japanese Jidaigeki Western films. The master being of course Kurosawa. Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Hidden Fortress influenced everything from action to sci-fi. The Shakespeare Westerns with great narratives. It's fascinating to me the influential exchange that would occur between American and Japanese cinema starting in the 1950s and continuing today.

Then of course the spaghetti westerns. The Leone/Eastwood/Morricone combo brought the western into a new era. One that used the sound and experimental camera tech of euro cinema but with a new character, the anti-hero. The classic white hat vs black hat is trashed for the bad guy you root for. The Eastwood persona was born.

These genres in turn, all influenced the Wild Bunch which changed the level of violence accepted in the American films jumping from PG to R. Realistic bloody gunfights. Language Nudity. Pretty tame perhaps by today's standards, but in 1969 this changed everything for Hollywood and action.

So gun to my head, I'll go with

Stagecoach
Seven Samurai
Good Bad Ugly

Wild Bunch - runner up

Aside - I love Winchester 73. I think the epic tale of a Man seeking to reclaim his stolen gun is captivating. Stewart is fantastic. There is an element of dark revenge which plays out that is ahead of its time. If it's on, I watch it every time.

Favorite is so "iffy" - I mean, if I just limited it to 1 with Eastwood and 1 with Duke, that would be extremely tough. interesting thought exercise, though.

Meandering thoughts...

Clint: Josey Wales, Unforgiven or TGTBATU? Josey Wales, but it is not by a country mile.

Duke: Stagecoach, The Searchers, True Grit, Rio Bravo, about fiddy others? Rio Bravo, but again, on any given day, The Searchers or True Grit might get it in front, or Big Jake, the cavalry trilogy and many others come into play.

So, for a third? Maybe Once Upon A Time in the West or How the West Was Won. Or Shane. (ETA: Or High Noon, The Magnificent Seven...)

There are too many great westerns to limit this to a three, IMHO.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Once upon a time in the West
Outlaw Josey Wales