American Film Institute

Western

Top Ten Western Movies Presented by AFI

#1 The Searchers

Martha Edwards opens the door of her cabin to the arid Texas landscape outside just as her brother-in-law, Ethan Edwards, approaches on horseback.

#2 High Noon

At 10:30 on a quiet morning in 1870, three outlaws ride into the western town of Hadleyville just as its marshal, Will Kane, is being married.

#3 Shane

A lone horseman arrives in a western town and helps bring an end to a violent feud between the homesteaders and cattle barons of the area.

#4 Unforgiven

Two retired sharp-shooters and a would-be gunslinger team up to claim a $1,000 reward for killing two cowboys who brutally disfigured a prostitute.

#5 Red River

In 1851, Thomas Dunson and his friend, Groot Nadine, leave St. Louis and join a wagon train headed for California.

#6 The Wild Bunch

An aging band of outlaws makes one last score and heads to Mexico with a band of bounty hunters on their heels. They leave a trail of bloody mayhem.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid movie still

#7 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Dismayed by the extreme measures to prevent robberies taken by a small-town western bank, notorious bank robber Butch Cassidy wanders over to a saloon to meet his partner, The Sundance Kid, who is in the middle of a card game.

#8 McCabe and Mrs. Miller

An itinerant gambler and a madame become business partners in this off-beat western set in a small mining town in the Pacific Northwest.

#9 Stagecoach

In 1855, the Overland stage from Tonto to Lordsburg leaves town with eight people on board. In the front, sit Buck the driver and Marshal Curley Wilcox, who is riding shotgun to protect the stage from hostile Indians and from the Plummer brothers, a vicious band of outlaws.

#10 Cat Ballou

A young woman returning to her Wyoming town finds her father murdered because he refused to sell his ranch.