The Western is the first genre since his early gangster movies that Quentin Tarantino has returned to. After Jackie Brown, Tarantino made a kung fu movie (Kill Bill, which the director considers to be one piece, despite being released in two parts), then made a grindhouse exploitation slasher (Death Proof), a World War II bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission epic (Inglourious Basterds), then a Spaghetti Western (Django Unchained) — and then he followed it up with another Western. With its snowy setting, morally ambiguous characters, and bleak subject matter, The Hateful Eight is more of a revisionist Western than a Spaghetti Western — although there is an abundance of graphic violence, Ennio Morricone compositions, and intense closeups. So, here are 10 Revisionist Westerns To Watch If You Like The Hateful Eight.
3:10 to Yuma
Long before he fixed Wolverine’s solo movie trilogy with the Oscar-nominated Logan, James Mangold directed 3:10 to Yuma, a bleak revisionist Western starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. It’s based on Elmore Leonard’s 1953 story of the same name, which was previously adapted as a black-and-white Western classic in 1957. Leonard is one of Quentin Tarantino’s foremost influences. His impact on Tarantino’s work can be seen in every movie the director has helmed. So, naturally, a film adaptation of a Leonard story that is faithful to the source material’s focus on character is a must-see for any Tarantino fan.
Bone Tomahawk
The best way to describe S. Craig Zahler is that he’s a lot like Quentin Tarantino, but with less mainstream appeal. Zahler makes movies that pay homage to old grindhouse exploitation movies and low-budget B-movies, but brings a modern twist to them, along with sharp storytelling and truly brutal violence. Where Tarantino’s violence is somewhat fun, Zahler’s is decidedly nasty. Bone Tomahawk was Zahler’s directorial debut. For the first half, it’s a straightforward Western. But in the second half, as a small-town sheriff and his posse head out to find two missing people, it turns into a grisly survival horror movie.
Slow West
This might be the least action-packed Western ever made, and based on the title, that seems to be the point — it’s a slow-burn — because when the action eventually does hit, it’s so much more brutal. It’s completely unexpected and it comes at a time when we’ve come to root for the characters on the business end of the violence. Slow West opens with two characters — a mysterious bounty hunter, played by Michael Fassbender, and a Scottish teenager, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee — and a simple conflict between them: the bounty hunter won’t tell the teenager his motivation. The tension organically escalates from there.
Unforgiven
There’s going to be a couple of Clint Eastwood-helmed Westerns on this list, because as a leading figure in both the Italian Spaghetti Western scene and the gritty ‘70s American cinema scene, he practically invented the revisionist Western. Unforgiven stars Eastwood alongside Morgan Freeman and an Oscar-winning Gene Hackman in the story of an aging gunslinger with a dark past who reluctantly takes on one last job with the help of his old partner and a new outlaw on the block. It is possibly the best Western to come along since the Western in its classical form went out of fashion.
The Revenant
Hot off his Best Picture-winning pitch-black comedy masterpiece Birdman, Alejandro G. Iñárritu helmed this revisionist Western epic that’s shot more like an arthouse drama than a $135 million studio blockbuster. The Revenant stars Leonardo DiCaprio as true-life figure Hugh Glass, who was mauled by a bear — in a shockingly brutal sequence — and left for dead.
As he struggles to return to his family, he’ll be chased by armed frontiersmen on horseback, sleep inside dead animals, and eat raw bison liver — which DiCaprio actually did, true to the method acting technique, and ended up winning his long-awaited Academy Award for it).
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
This movie gives away the ending in the title, but that’s not a bad thing. We go into the film knowing that a man named Jesse James will be killed by a man named Robert Ford. And director Andrew Dominik expertly explores that expectation. It’s a long movie, with a sprawling depiction of the two men’s relationship. Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck play the lead roles honestly, and build a real onscreen rapport with one another. On top of that, the ominous foreshadowing in the title makes their relationship truly compelling. It has a wordy title, but this movie is brilliantly made.
High Plains Drifter
Imagine a Clint Eastwood Western where the stranger who rides into town in the opening scene doesn’t turn out to be the hero they need; he turns out to be a herald of Satan, sent there to wreak demonic havoc on some people in frontier times. Well, that’s the basic premise underlying High Plains Drifter. It sets us up to expect one thing, and then pulls the rug out from under us to escalate the tension with a chilling twist that turns it into a horror movie. Eastwood directed the film himself, which would explain the technical craftsmanship behind it.
Django Unchained
Quentin Tarantino had already shaken up the Western genre by the time he mixed it with the “whodunit” for The Hateful Eight. The genre evolved when Tarantino made the controversial decision to write and direct a Sergio Leone-esque Spaghetti Western set in the antebellum era, with the plot revolving around American slavery.
While the movie had plenty of detractors upon release in 2012 — particularly from Spike Lee, who even called for a boycott of the film — the general consensus is that the story and the tone of the movie and the Django and Broomhilda characters are all suitably moving and empowering.
True Grit (2010)
It may have seemed strange when the Coen brothers took on the task of remaking a classic John Wayne Western, but with True Grit, it makes perfect sense. True Grit is one of Wayne’s darkest films, and he plays an uncharacteristically cynical character in it: the hard-drinking Rooster Cogburn. The Coens have always done a fantastic job of taking twisted stories with bleak settings and making them work by focusing on character (Fargo, No Country for Old Men, Miller’s Crossing etc.). In True Grit, there are no traditional heroes and villains. There is a cast of four characters with parallel storylines who all have understandable motivations in this deceptively simplistic premise.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
This was the original revisionist Western. Everyone in Hollywood said that William Goldman was crazy for writing a Western in which the protagonists were a pair of bank robbers who flee to Mexico instead of facing the antagonists, because that mixed up the genre’s whole formula. The line between right and wrong finally stopped being so black-and-white in Westerns. There is good and bad on both sides of any argument. And that, paired with the incredible chemistry shared by Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the title roles, is what makes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid a true movie classic.