5. Don’t Come Knocking (2005)
It probably makes sense to follow a film about the de-mythification of the cowboy persona/culture with another one. The neo-westerns are famous for that because they may take the traditional type of western character or story and can put a modern spin on it which sometimes feels like a criticism of the fading legacy of the cowboy persona. Now if we’re talking about neo-westerns, one simply can’t skip “Paris, Texas”. Wim Wenders masterpiece was written by Sam Shepard, won the Palme d’Or, and had universal acclaim since then.
Now, of course, it only makes sense that when you hear Wenders and Shepard have collaborated on another meditative road movie that can be described as neo-western, then you’d have high expectations. Maybe critics felt a little disappointed with it because they expected something better but if you leave out all that, you’d actually get a rock-solid drama about redemption.
The film follows a washed-up Western movie star who feels his film set and tries to reconnect with his past. More he faces his past, the more he realizes that his life has been built on falsehoods. Shepard is obviously good as you can expect from him in the lead role and one film critic noted how the bitterness in his writing makes an interesting contrast or balance with Wim’s fondness or fascination with American culture.
Wenders hasn’t really made a major comeback in his feature films up until “Perfect Days” (2023) and one can’t claim that “Don’t Come Knocking” was the overlooked masterpiece but there’s still so much greatness in it. Wim’s visual poetry is on full display, the cinematography has some wonderful shots. The supporting cast is all great, from Jessica Lange (The MVP) to Tim Roth to Sarah Polley and so on. The score is memorable as well. Some pacing issues aside, “Don’t Come Knocking” is a wonderful, melancholic poetry.
4. Lucky (2017)
“Paris, Texas” was mentioned and if you think this is the best leading performance of Harry Dean Stanton, then you may want to watch “Lucky” and think about it again. Not a traditional western in any way. It’s more of a beautiful introspective on mortality and solitude. It also serves as a beautiful farewell film for Harry Dean who gives one of his best performances.
The man was always such a natural and remarkable character actor, so it’s a joy to watch him carry the whole thing by playing a 90-year-old atheist living in a small desert town. As he confronts his own mortality, he interacts with a cast of eccentric locals, including a delightful supporting performance from the one and only David Lynch. Their friendship and collaborations were so beautiful that it was always nice to sete them together.
Unlike most neo-westerns, Lucky doesn’t have any kind of high-stake conflicts, but it has the essence of the Western archetype of the lone, aging figure reckoning with his past and the changes in the modern world. It’s also a more spiritual film. Stanton’s moving, beautiful performance also makes the film ring more true. This is his film in every way.
The film is directed by John Caroll Lynch, a character actor himself (who deserved an Oscar nom for “Zodiac”) but is written for and in every way inspired by Stanton himself. It’s not about his life, he doesn’t play himself but the stories in the film are his own stories, his life and memories make the story of Lucky. That is how the material was built and they brought it all together. Even If you’re unfamiliar with his persona or the films, there’s still a very charming quality about “Lucky” that is hard to resist.
3. Let Him Go (2020)
You got to respect Kevin Costner for his dedication to the Western genre. You may like or not like him as an actor, but as he grew older his screen presence has matured and got more charismatic to pull off such roles. “Yellowstone” basically brought back the idea of old-fashioned westerns on television and him doing “Horizon” films, fighting for them to be theatrically released is an admirable attempt.
However, “Let Him Go” is one of the finest neo-westerns of the 2020s. It’s tight, it has dramatic depth, the dinner sequence with Lesley Manville is edge-of-your-seat-level thrilling and while we talked about Costner here more, Diane Lane’s performance is the actual MVP. She brings so much to the part that one wonders how she didn’t get a single major award nomination for this. Her performance gives the emotional weight to the film.
Let Him Go is a slow-burning, character-driven, and adult-oriented western which means it flopped at the box office. Costner and Lane star as a retired rancher couple, George and Margaret Blackledge, who set out to rescue their grandson from an abusive stepfather and his menacing family, the Weboys. As you can expect, things get out of control in soon. Thomas Bezucha’s direction is good enough and he deserves praise for doing a film like this in a time where the studios are obsessed with doing only IP films.
Even when the story feels like it’s going to predictable places, you absolutely do not mind and enjoy the ride. He knows how to build suspense carefully step-by-step, culminating in a cathartic and heartbreaking finale. Performances aside, the cinematography also gives the film a stark atmosphere. Unlike some of the other titles on the list, “Let Him Go” is a type of Western that can please the fans of both traditional and non-traditional type of westerns. It’s also refreshing to see aging couples as our leading heroes.
2. Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts (2017)
Since most of the list is American-centric with mostly male leads, here comes a striking Neo-Western revenge tale. The third feature from acclaimed Indonesian director Mouly Surya, “Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts” has a wonderful and fascinating mix of both the Spaghetti Western traditional and Southeast Asian folklore, which gives the film a unique soul of its own.
The film follows a recently widowed woman named Marlina who gets assaulted by a group of bandits. Now she’s up for revenge, with the severed head of their leader in tow. Even though the story sounds very simple, it’s more than that, and strong cinematography never lets it be yet “another revenge story”.
Marlina is a character that has the elements of a traditional spaghetti western hero. She doesn’t speak much, there is an air of mystery around her. That’s why Marsha Timothy’s performance should be applauded because her performance brings both stoicism and elegance to her character in the tradition of best western heroes where you keep wondering what is she thinking, what is she going to say or do. She’s also not some kind of fantasy badass who kills everyone and feels no remorse. While the film’s message against patriarchy is clear enough, it also gives lots of vulnerability to our lead character as well.
The film has also been called as a “feminist western” and it makes sense a lot here because it’s not getting called like that only because the lead character is a female but the film also takes time to explore female allyship because women in the film have a great deal of trust in each other. There’s also little bit of humor injected into it in the right dose. The film got more attention than the director’s previous films in Indonesia but still for the international audiences, it went under the radar.
1. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2006)
Tommy Lee Jones can do it all. Football player, polo player, strong skills when it comes to horses and guns, great actor, strong director, and so on. He can do so many things, except giving interviews. The man never liked press junkets or talk shows. It’s almost torture for him to go through but he did make talk show appearances than usual for “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” when it came out. That alone shows how much he’s passionate about the films he directs himself and indeed, the man has a strong passion for the genre given some of the other films he directed were also westerns. Jones won the Best Actor Prize at the Cannes Film Festival but it wasn’t enough to turn this into a profit at the box office, unfortunately.
The film soon got overlooked. The screenplay also won a prize and it was a well-deserved one. Written by Guillermo Arriaga, who’s best known for writing the early films of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, he once again brings so much humanism and excellent handling of flashbacks and perspectives in his writing. Jones plays a rancher who embarks on a journey to fulfill the dying wish of his friend Melquiades. He was a Mexican immigrant unjustly killed by a border patrol officer.
It was inspired by the real-life killing in Texas of a teenager, Esequiel Hernandez Jr, by United States Marines during a military operation near the United States–Mexico border, and the screenplay, by slowly revealing the truths surrounding his death also exposes political and racial tensions of the region.
Jones is also doing an exceptional job at bringing the story to the screen, his style is both classic and conemporary which is kind of what you want from neo-westerns often. When you deliver a nonlinear story, you also have to handle the editing aspect really well to make the film flow and they were able to do that. The narrative is full of poetic tone, with some tender moments and dry humor as well which only enriches the experience. This is a wonderful and yet another underrated film that deserves a much larger audience.