Hell or High Water is shaping up to become one of the most notable modern examples of the revisioned western. To mark its release I’m going to be talking about a subgenre of one of the most celebrated traditions of American cinema: the western. Western films which have shaped both the values and heroism of the American identity but neglected its uglier bits of that identity. Revisionist westerns are a contemporary genres that use the ‘western’ setting not merely to subvert the genre but to find something deeper to say about the culture that birthed it.

The Wild Bunch (1969)

Sam Peckinpah directed The Wild Bunch intending to subvert the tradition of westerns by overturning the artificiality of Hollywood violence which, at that point, were always portrayed as bloodless and morally black-and-white.

Dances with Wolves (1990)

The classic phrase “Cowboys and Indians” verbalized a long-standing rivalry in the western that really should have been “Cowboys over Indians”. Dances with Wolves continues this tradition but transposes the fabricated “rivalry” for the greater tragedy it was.

Unforgiven (1992)

An unsung rule of the western was that no matter how morally corrupt your heroes were they’d always be justifiably so, just as long as your villains were worse. Unforgiven is about old men who look back at the ‘old west’ as nothing more than the sins of their youth.

Honorable Mention: Deadwood (2005-2006)

It’s a television series but I couldn’t not give this a mention. Deadwood is a masterful revisionist’s take on the western that reminded us how the real outlaws weren’t the bandits, gunmen and rustlers but the politicians who orchestrated the anarchy of the old west.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Gay cowboys. At the time you couldn’t think of stronger antithesis of words, and since then the idea has been unfairly ridiculed and badly parodied. It’s also proven to surpass its one-off romantic gimmick and become a perennial symbol of letting go of old values and defining new ones.

The Proposition (2006)

The Proposition is the only non-American entry on the list, but it’s a western nevertheless. It makes turn-of-the-century Australia into an oversized prison, where those making the laws and those breaking them are equally heinous but also reminds us that objective human morals exist on both sides.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Demythologizes one of the west’s most patently overly glamorized icons, and puts a human face on its most maligned villain. The film’s emphasis on Bob Ford’s fixation on Jesse James has become a study on how the cinema’s love affair with the old west has become a bad trend in rewriting history.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

A neo-western on the not-so-old American west, No Country for Old Men makes a point out of its 1980 setting to tell a brutal odyssey through an increasingly (and senselessly) violent landscape becoming less and less familiar to an ageing sheriff.

True Grit (2010)

True Grit plays like a vaudevillian Wild West show, but its deconstruction of revenge and frontier justice make into something of a transitory indictment on the callous gunplay that made undeserving heroes out of borderline sociopaths and egomaniacs.

Meek’s Cutoff (2011)

The Oregon High Desert is one of the American west’s last frontiers. Meek’s Cutoff sees the desperation of its settlers—lost on this unforgiving landscape—as a level playing field in gender politics. Kelly Reichardt’s feminist revision seeks to unshackle the women of the old west.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

The brunt of The Hateful Eight’s nearly three-hour run-time takes place in a single haberdashery. The distrust, race-fuelled tension and eccentric characters make the shack into a deeply American metaphor about our tendency to reduce important problems into reactionary bloodshed.

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