10 Best Slow-Burn Westerns, Ranked (original) (raw)
'Once Upon a Time in the West' movie poster
Image via Paramount Pictures
Published Feb 14, 2025, 7:24 PM EST
Jeremy has more than 2500 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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Undeniably, there’s something great about a Western that contains plenty of action or proves exciting to watch. Take a look at something like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which might have some slower moments in the first half, but eventually takes off and gets pretty relentless as it goes along. High Noon is another classic that wastes very little time pacing-wise, and something like Stagecoach zips by more than most other films of its age.
But there are also Westerns that function as slow-burn films, and these can be just as satisfying, even if they're naturally not as immediate while also requiring a little more patience to appreciate. The following films aren’t necessarily the slowest Westerns, nor the very best ones overall, but all can be counted as successful Westerns that take their time. They're ranked below, starting with the pretty good and ending with the greats.
10 'Cry Macho' (2021)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood as Michael Milo in Cry Macho
Image via Warner Bros.
Well, okay, Cry Macho is an admittedly flawed film, but it’s certainly not without merit as far as Westerns with modern-day settings go. It’s a late-era Clint Eastwood movie he both starred in and directed, and might well be the last time he does appear in front of the camera, having one last hurrah as the sort of character he’d played before in Westerns, but much, much older here.
Cry Macho feels like it was directed by an older director, and the film ambles along slowly with its simple story and very old star at the center of it all. But fans of Eastwood’s vast filmography should still find things to appreciate about Cry Macho, even if most of the appeal of the film does involve seeing Eastwood’s (probably) final performance in a rather mellow, bittersweet movie.
9 'The Ballad of Cable Hogue' (1970)
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
While The Wild Bunch remains Sam Peckinpah’s boldest and most well-known Western, it’s far from his only great one. The Ballad of Cable Hogue tends to get overshadowed by that aforementioned 1969 film, especially because it came out only one year later, but it’s very engaging and also refreshingly different, in many ways, feeling a little breezier and more comedic.
But it’s not a walk in the park, nor a pure comedy, because there’s still an emphasis here on the end of the Old West, thanks to rapidly changing societal attitudes and technological advancements. The Wild Bunch explores such things in a more action-packed and bombastic way, while The Ballad of Cable Hogue explores those themes in a more laidback way, functioning as something of a hangout film until it inevitably decides to get a little heavier. Certainly, it packs a punch when it wants to.
8 'The Sisters Brothers' (2018)
Directed by Jacques Audiard
John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix in 'The Sisters Brothers'
Image via Annapurna Pictures
The Sisters Brothers feels like a deconstruction of more typical Western films, or perhaps qualifies as something of an arthouse Western. It takes its time with a fairly simple story, which mostly revolves around one man going to great lengths to get some information from another. The latter hires the titular Sisters brothers to capture the former and get that valuable info from him.
There’s some offbeat comedy here, but The Sisters Brothers is mostly pretty grim, but the energy it has, plus the unique atmosphere, do make it a compelling watch for those after something a little different. The pacing is deliberate, meaning that there are certainly slower parts here that might challenge the patience of some, but it’s nonetheless a film that’s worth sticking with.
7 'The Hateful Eight' (2015)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Samuel L. Jackson and Walton Goggins in The Hateful Eight
Image via The Weinstein Company
Though it builds to something explosive in the end, The Hateful Eight is unafraid to take its time getting there, unfolding over an epic-length runtime of approximately three hours. And it’s confined to a pretty small area considering it’s something of an epic, with much of the film involving a group of shady characters stuck inside a cabin while a blizzard rages outside, temporarily preventing travel.
Pretty much everyone is some level of hateful and/or evil, and verbal confrontations early on slowly get more heated, leading to more physical conflict, and then eventually, things turn deadly. The Hateful Eight really is a slow burn in every sense of the word, standing as both one of Quentin Tarantino’s slowest films (not automatically a bad thing) and one of his most violent.
6 'Dead Man' (1995)
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Image via Miramax Films
Dead Man isn't just an unusual and arthouse Western, because it also feels like a bit of a dark fantasy film, too. The whole thing unfolds in an eerie and dreamlike manner, with a story about a man on the run throughout the West, depicting various unusual – and occasionally graphically violent – encounters he has with all sorts of people along the way.
If you’ve seen a Jim Jarmusch film before, you might have some idea of what to expect, but Jarmusch is also out there enough that he never 100% plays by anyone’s rules, even his own. There are wild turns and big creative swings to be found in a movie like Dead Man, which occupies an unusual place stylistically, and also stands as a movie that feels intentionally listless at times, but in a manner that kind of works.
5 'The Power of the Dog' (2021)
Directed by Jane Campion
Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil Burbank standing in an open field in The Power of the Dog.
Image via Netflix
If you want a big explosive story set during Old West times, you're not going to find that in a movie like The Power of the Dog. What you get instead is something very atmospheric and subtle; it’s a film more focused on its characters and their complexities than anything else. Thankfully, the quality of the acting is high, so this approach definitely works.
At its core, there’s a group of people bound together because of strained family ties, and they interact/clash in unexpected ways, with so many people here keeping their true feelings about things under wraps. The Power of the Dog does linger in one’s mind after it’s over, which helps, considering it’s not really exciting before it finishes. But it’s a movie that wants you to think about it once the end credits start rolling, and it achieves this pretty well.
4 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford' (2007)
Directed by Andrew Dominik
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
A long film with a long title, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is very methodical and downbeat, not to mention deconstructive in what it wants to do, as a Western. It’s all about the two titular characters, with the former – yes, spoilers – getting assassinated by the latter, principally because of jealousy and a desire to have the kind of notoriety he does.
It’s the sort of thing Andrew Dominik specializes in making, though The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is also something that stands out within his filmography because he doesn’t usually make Westerns. Anyway, it’s a confident and beautiful-looking Western, taking on some heavy themes and big ideas, all the while giving such things space to breathe, thanks to a slower – but still efficient – pace.
3 'The Rider' (2017)
Directed by Chloé Zhao
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A person in a cowboy hat stands in a vast prairie with storm clouds brewing in the distance in The Rider.
Image via Sony Pictures Classics
Even among some of these other slow-paced Westerns, The Rider is uniquely calm and even meditative. It’s a film about recovery and adapting, focusing on a young man who had an accident prior to the main events of the film that affected his ability to continue being a rodeo rider. His life naturally has to change, and The Rider explores that long and difficult process.
There isn't much of a narrative here, and neither are there too many characters. The Rider keeps things personal throughout, but is moving and empathetic enough in its approach that burning so slowly never feels boring. Those willing to watch something that’s perhaps more of a character drama than a traditional Western should find this film quite involving, and likely very emotional, too.
2 'Unforgiven' (1992)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
William Munny (Clint Eastwood) pointing a rifle in Unforgiven
Image via Warner Bros.
While Unforgiven isn't quite as slow as say The Power of the Dog or The Rider, it’s worth ranking highly here because it is still pretty subdued in terms of its pacing, and it just so happens to be one of the best Westerns ever made, too. Really, it’s probably the best American Western made outside of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and even then, it rivals most of the classics made closer to the 20th century’s mid-point.
It explores justice, crime, legacy, and the difficulty of seeking redemption through a straightforward story packed with interesting characters all played by great actors. It’s not as slow as Eastwood’s Cry Macho, either, but Unforgiven does also see the idea of aging explored within the confines of the Western genre, with most of the main characters here being old men who are sometimes – but not always – stuck in their old ways.
1 'Once Upon a Time in the West' (1968)
Directed by Sergio Leone
Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven was dedicated to two filmmakers the actor/director had worked with earlier in his career, one of them being Sergio Leone. Leone made three Westerns with Eastwood, with his first post-Eastwood film being arguably his slowest: Once Upon a Time in the West. But slow doesn’t mean bad at all, as should be clear by now… and it’s exemplified especially well here, because there’s an argument to be made that Once Upon a Time in the West is Leone’s best.
And if not, it’s a contender, also standing out for having one of the best scores Ennio Morricone ever composed. There are so many sequences here that are so drawn out, and might prove achingly slow if Leone, Morricone, and all the actors involved weren’t all at the top of their respective games. Few Westerns burn as slowly as this one, but though it burns slow, it also burns brighter than the vast majority of Westerns, too.