If You Liked The Power of the Dog, You’ll Like These Gritty Westerns
The Power of the Dog isn’t your father’s Western. Jane Campion’s adaptation of Thomas Savage’s work feels more like a Faulkner novel than the horses, cowboys hats and lassos would lead you to believe. If you’re looking for a shootout, this isn’t that kind of movie. Power of the Dog is more interested in the richness and wretchedness of its characters than gun smoke.
Westerns aren’t so black in white anymore, in color or in character. The pitted struggles of cowboys versus Indians, good guys versus bad guys seem quaint to the modern movie-goer. Instead of Manichaean conflict, the genre has dared to become fluid, leaning into the humanity of its characters instead of the perpetuated mythic kind of Wild West where good always prevails.
In short, Westerns like Power of the Dog have dared to be real. Here are some more that have elevated the genre.
Unforgiven (1992)
Unforgiven may be the movie that kicked off the trend of subverted genre expectations in the Western, and Hollywood in general. Cowboy classic Clint Eastwood gives a career-high performance as a former outlaw turned family rancher with skeletons lining his closet. He faces off against a local town sheriff who’s draconian enforcement of the law bleeds into pure cruelty.
The heart of Unforgiven is its stark moral ambiguity. It’s a movie that eschews the paint by numbers morality associated with Westerns at the time. It is less The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and more the Ugly, the Ugly, and the Ugly. Nobody has clean hands in this movie, reflecting a harsh reality that we didn’t get from The Roy Rogers Show.
The Sisters Brothers (2018)
The Sisters Brothers is all about the pursuit of fools gold. John C. Reily and Joaquin Phoenix co-star as two brothers and hired guns in search of an idealistic chemist played by Riz Ahmed and Jakes Gyllenhal’s turncoat bounty hunter. The latter duo mean to create a utopia on Earth by means of a solution that makes panning for gold like shooting fish in a barrel.
The optimism of Riz Ahmed’s chemist, the mind behind this visionary thinking, feels so out of place against the grit and duplicity of the film’s world. His idealism anchors the theme of the movie. But this is the West, where, dream as we might, we don’t ever get what we want without someone demanding a cut, or our head.
The Proposition (2005)
Let’s get one thing out of the way: I swear this is the movie that inspired Red Dead Redemption. I mean, look at the cover! For some folks, the comparison to the blockbuster video game franchise says it all. But this movie (which I must add came out well before the game) is an absolute gem.
America isn’t a majority share-holder on Outlaw culture. The Proposition is set in the Australian Outback, a Wild West in its own right. Guy Pearce stars as an outlaw strong-armed into hunting down a former member of his gang: his own brother. This movie has style, many great performances, thoughtful inclusion of Indigenous peoples, and a script and score penned by Nick Cave. 100% worth a watch.
No Country For Old Men (2007)
No Country For Old Men feels like a new generation of Western. The Coen Brothers are not strangers to the genre, and the story is adapted from Cormac McCarthy whose magnum opus Blood Meridian fits snugly within this elevated Western format.
Perhaps better called a post-Western, No Country For Old Men presents a world where the lawmen of old have faded into the past, leaving only an uncertain world where viciousness reigns. The 70’s setting may not conjure feelings of a Wild West, but lurking just beneath the seemingly tamed surface, No Country reveals that even our civilized world indeed possesses the raw, dog-eat-dog nature of a frontier land.
The Salvation (2014)
The Danish Western flick The Salvation is a refreshing take on the genre by virtue of its immigrant perspective. Set in a post-Civil War West, as many Westerns do, The Salvation tells the story of a Danish immigrant, Mads Mikkelsen in a stellar performance, making a life for himself and his family in this strange, new land.
A Northern European emigré isn’t the common immigrant tale we hear, especially in a Western movie. But that off-beat, outsider perspective elevates the film’s examination of the brutality sown into the very soil of America’s wild, wild West. After a horrible tragedy befalls his family, Mikkelsen’s character steps into a world of wrath and revenge, the bloody world of the West.
Honorable Mentions:
