Celluloid Six-Guns #1 - Top Five Westerns

If you've never seen a Western before, here are the five you have to watch.

5. The Wild Bunch - Sam Peckinpah riddled the Western genre with bullets in this violent story of a dying West and the misfits who populate it. Filled with amoral characters, one amazing image after another and an unforgettable finale, this film took the genre conventions of the previous 40 years and turned them on their heads. Our protagonists - bandits and killers all - ultimately learn that there is one thing that one can count on, in a world spiraling outside of control and understanding; each other. Peckinpagh was never better than this (although Straw Dogs is pretty close); his visual tics (like slow-motion violence) are perfectly utilized in this film. His love of tough-as-nails protagonists, almost all of whom are on the wrong side of the law, is realized with the help of a great cast. There are little character - like bounty hunters L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin arguing over who gets a dead man's boots - that in the hands of a lesser cast wouldn't have added to the overall story in a rich, meaningful way. Finally, this movie (along with a few others like Bonny and Clyde and 2001) gave everyone a taste what cinema's second golden age - the Seventies - would be like; experimental, transgressive and fun-as-hell.

4. Red River - John Wayne plays Thomas Dunson, a man who builds a Texas cattle empire out of nothing and then, during a tough cattle drive, kinda goes nuts. What starts out like a pretty standard adventure drama becomes a psychological study in what happens when fortitude and determination are taken to an extreme. This film is also notable for the naturalistic performances and well-defined characters, something you often find in director Howard Hawks' films. If you ever thought that John Wayne could only play one type of character - the stoic, upright good guy - then you have to see this movie.

3. High Noon - Gary Cooper shows what it means to do your duty, when he takes on a band of thugs in a town full of people unwilling to help him. Although we are supposed to root for Cooper and hiss at the cowardly town's people for not helping him take care of the bad guys who are threat to all of them, there is enough nuance in the movie to make the viewer question "what would I do?" It's also hard to miss the Cold War parable, with Cooper standing in for America, protecting a powerless Free World from Commie bushwhackers. Another neat thing about the movie is that the story is told in approximate real-time. This device works well, heightening the tension as the seconds speed by before the ultimate confrontation.

2. For A Few Dollars - If Spaghetti Westerns were a mountain, this would be the peak. Sergio Leone shot one amazing scene after another, stitched them together with a story of three men living with their own moral codes in a world of greed and chaos, set it to an amazing score by Ennion Morricone and unleashed it on audiences. The performances of the leads - Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Gian Maria Volonté (who is stunning as the psychopathic gang leader) - are enthralling, with Leone's (and cinematographer Massimo Dallamano) camera work allowing them to say as much with a steely-eyed glance as they do with the dialogue. Although some would pick Leone's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as his best work, this is a much tighter, less sprawling and, ultimately more satisfying film.

1. The Searchers - Yep, another John Wayne movie. The Searchers is almost flawless. Director John Ford and cinematographer Winton Hoch created a beautiful film with many scenes looking like Frederic Remington paintings set in motion. Whether majestic shots of Monument Valley or quiet, intimate scenes - like Dorothy Jordan folding up brother-in-law John Wayne's riding coat with obvious longing for him - there are few wasted scenes. The story also present a hero (John Wayne's Etahn Edwards) who's rage and need for revenge consumes him. Although he ultimately does the "right thing" when his search comes to an end, there is some real tension as to what he will do to niece Natalie Wood after he finally finds her. And the final scene is one of the darkest and meaningful cinema. It shows how a great filmmaker can pack what is on the surface a simple shot with multiple layers of meaning.