The 8 best Western movies streaming on Netflix right now

The Power of the Dog (2021)

Jane Campion’s haunting psychodrama The Power of the Dog is among the most unique takes on the genre in recent years. Much of that owes to Jonny Greenwood’s score — its cello solos replacing the genre’s traditional guitar strings and sweeping orchestras — which gives the onscreen action an otherworldly feeling.

The film, set in 1920s Montana, unwraps the lives of the Burbank brothers, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons), after George marries lonely widow Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), setting surly Phil into a tailspin of cruelty that envelops the family. While quiet, peculiar surgeon-in-training Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) may seem like a babe in the woods on the ranch, he’s far more wily than anyone — especially Phil — could ever imagine. This is not a Western of shootouts and fistfights, instead sketching a thoughtful reflection of masculinity, sexuality, and what it takes to keep family safe in an inhospitable cultural and physical climate. 

Where to watch The Power of the Dog: Netflix

EW grade: A- (read the review)

Director: Jane Campion

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Thomasin McKenzie

Related content: Jane Campion wins Best Director and marks historic Oscar triumph for women

The Harder They Fall (2021)

Jeymes Samuel’s slick and splashy film pulls its carriage into town with a swagger recent Westerns have yet to surpass. With its percussive score and tough-as-nails cast, The Harder They Fall comes out gunslinging — and doesn’t stop until its open-ended conclusion sets up a potential sequel.

Following real-life figure Nat Love in a fictionalized revenge tale and heist caper, the film weaves Nat’s story toward a brutal twist that even the sharpest shooter didn’t see coming. And the epic smackdown between Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz) is a must-watch not just for genre fans, but for anyone who enjoys a beautifully choreographed fight scene played to perfection. 

Where to watch The Harder They Fall: Netflix

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Jeymes Samuel

Cast: Idris Elba, Jonathan Majors, Delroy Lindo, Regina King, Zazie Beetz, LaKeith Stanfield

Related content: Nominated for Nothing: The good, the bad, and the ugly truth of The Harder They Fall

The Hateful Eight (2015)

While all of Quentin Tarantino’s films owe a debt to the genre, The Hateful Eight is one of two true Westerns he’s directed. Fittingly enough, it began as a sequel novel to Tarantino’s other Western, Django Unchained (2012), before evolving back into big-screen form. Here, the filmmaker has his usual ensemble cast, but this time they’re all stuck with each other in one increasingly claustrophobic location: Minnie’s Haberdashery, an outpost for weary travelers in Wyoming.

A heavy winter storm is settling in, the icy elements trapping a group of dangerous lawmen and outlaws indoors, each of them trying to sniff out which of the group is not quite who they say they are. Call it a cross between The Thing (1982) and Tarantino’s own Reservoir Dogs (1992), except set in the post-Civil War West, among killers, soldiers, and bounty hunters. In his final film, iconic composer Ennio Morricone won his first Oscar, while giving Tarantino’s catalog its first original score.

Where to watch The Hateful Eight: Netflix

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir 

Related content: Ennio Morricone on scoring The Hateful Eight: Quentin Tarantino ‘left me completely free’

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is far from the Coen brothers’ first Western, but this time it’s an anthology film stitching together six darkly funny tales. Ballad takes us through the American frontier on horseback, covered wagon, on foot, and even, in the titular short, through the sky on angels’ wings. One story involves an old prospector (Tom Waits) digging for gold alone — or so he thought, until a not-so-friendly fellow fortune-seeker arrives with ill intent. Another is about death itself and the portentous ride to the other side.

Like much of the Coens’ work, these are tragedies tinged with mordant humor and punctuated by the bleakest twists of fate. The directors’ six tales are mythic and intimate, comic fables only they could have made, while their longtime composer Carter Burwell makes the most of the opportunity to score six movies in one. All the while each vignette feels simultaneously familiar and alien, at once classically old-fashioned and brazenly unorthodox.

Where to watch The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: Netflix

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Joel and Ethan Coen

Cast: Tom Waits, Tim Blake Nelson, Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson, Bill Heck, Zoe Kazan, Saul Rubinek

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Legends of the Fall (1994)

From its stunning landscapes to its sweeping musical score and epic decade-spanning narrative, Edward Zwick’s Legends of the Fall is a modern Western — that is, the narrative extends all the way into the 1960s — that takes great care to capture the visual majesty of the setting and the genre.

This is a family saga, starting with ex-Army colonel William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) and his three sons on their Montana ranch. The matriarch is out of the picture, so it’s just Dad and the boys — Alfred (Aidan Quinn), Tristan (Brad Pitt), and Samuel (Henry Thomas). With the passing years, personal and political struggles come and go, some leaving more lasting damage than others. From WWI through Prohibition and beyond, Legends of the Fall is in part a history of the western United States, but one anchored by an ever-shifting romantic entanglement between Susannah (Julia Ormond) and all three Ludlow brothers.

Where to watch Legends of the Fall: Netflix

Director: Edward Zwick

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn, Henry Thomas, Julia Ormond, Karina Lombard

Related content: Brad Pitt ‘wasn’t pleased’ with Legends of the Fall, says director Ed Zwick

Concrete Cowboy (2021)

This may be an unorthodox choice. After all, Concrete Cowboy isn’t set in the great wide open of the American frontier. It’s not a period piece, either. Rather, it’s a contemporary drama set in North Philly — more specifically, on and around Fletcher Street, where urban cowboys raise horses and train riders in the city. 

But Concrete Cowboy’s Western bonafides go further than simply having characters riding on horseback. After all, it revolves around a stranger with a complicated past coming to town — 15-year-old Cole (Caleb McLaughlin), who’s in from Detroit to stay with his estranged father, Harp (a subdued Idris Elba). The film takes place within an inhospitable environment where brushes with outlaws (and the law itself) can lead to death by gunfire. Scattered imagery further reinforces the genre traditions: a horse-drawn cart on a dusty street, saddled cowboys riding in a line and blurry from the rising heat, a wild horse that needs to be wrangled; and a cowboy funeral.

Where to watch Concrete Cowboy: Netflix

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Ricky Staub

Cast: Idris Elba, Caleb McLaughlin, Lorraine Toussaint, Jharrel Jerome, Method Man

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Silverado (1985)

It’s no surprise that this breezy action-comedy came from one of the architects of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Lawrence Kasdan. The two films would make a nifty double feature for the hats as much as the high adventure. In any case, this is an ensemble Western with four concurrent storylines revolving around Emmett (Scott Glenn), who sets out to reunite with his family in the eponymous Texas town before treking to the promised land of California.

He teams up with three other cowboys: there’s Mal (Danny Glover), out for vengeance against the man who killed his father; Paden (Kevin Kline), full of wide-eyed ambition, with dollar signs in his eyes; and then there’s Paden’s charming scoundrel of a brother, Jake (Kevin Costner, in one of his first major roles). Who are they joining forces against? A corrupt sheriff, of course. The movie is a traditional Western right down to its narrative bones, but Kasdan and his actors infuse it with a raucous, even modern, sense of energy and humor.

Where to watch Silverado: Netflix

Director: Lawrence Kasdan

Cast: Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, Kevin Kline, Kevin Costner, Jeff Goldblum, Brian Dennehy, Rosanna Arquette, Linda Hunt, Lynn Whitfield

Related content: A Lawrence Kasdan filmography

Strange Way of Life (2023)

What happens when a legendary Spanish auteur tries his hand at a Western in his English-language debut? We get Pedro Almodovár’s Strange Way of Life, his love letter to the queer cowboy subgenre starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal as old lovers who have an unexpected reunion amid a Romeo and Juliet-esque family squabble. 

Pascal’s Silva and his bright green denim jacket ride into town and reignite his decades-old romance with Jake (Hawke), now sheriff of Bitter Creek. With his splashy signature color palette, Almodovár brings a taste of the telenovela into the Western genre as his story flits between Silva and Jake’s past and present. The only gripe here? That the filmmaker could have expanded Silva and Jake’s story into feature length.

Where to watch Strange Way of Life: Netflix

Director: Pedro Almodovár

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Pedro Pascal, Manu Rios, José Condessa, Jason Fernández

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