A Western movie doesn’t need to have a showdown to be good, but it often helps, right? It’s satisfying to have two (or more) characters at odds ultimately settle their differences through an impromptu or well-planned showdown, with it being inevitable that at least someone will perish by the time it’s over. It’s a reliable way to end almost any kind of movie (see Gladiator, The Last Duel, or just about anything directed by John Woo), and it’s particularly so for Westerns.
What follows is a rundown of the Western movies that have some of the best showdowns or duels in cinematic history, with such scenes usually – but not exclusively – taking place toward the end of each respective movie. There will therefore be some spoilers here, since showdowns are often climactic in nature, but plenty of these movies are fairly old, and also, a good many of the showdowns do end in the way you’d probably expect them to.
10
‘A Fistful of Dollars’ (1964)
You’re going to have to get used to seeing Sergio Leone films pop up in this ranking a fair bit, since he directed some of the best Westerns of all time, and pretty much all of them had at least one great showdown. With A Fistful of Dollars, said showdown was fairly simple, compared to what came later in Leone’s filmography, but it’s still great regardless.
Infamously, A Fistful of Dollars was an unofficial remake of Yojimbo, with both movies being about someone coming into a town and playing two warring factions within that town against each other. By the end of A Fistful of Dollars, the ruse is revealed, but by that point, Clint Eastwood’s character doesn’t run the risk of being properly outgunned (plenty of people have already been gunned down), and so he gets to finish things off himself, and in style.
9
‘Shane’ (1953)
Shane has proven to be an influential and enduring Western, being one of the better ones made in the 1950s, truth be told. The narrative here is also about as simple as the title, since Shane is about a mysterious gunfighter of that name who ends up serving as the protector of a family who are being pressured to move off from their farm, first with money, and later with intimidation.
It all naturally builds to a showdown in the way you’d expect, but the ambiguity after the showdown’s gone, well, down, and the bad guys are out of the picture, makes Shane’s ending feel a little more memorable. It’s definitely bittersweet, and depending on what you think is in store for the titular character’s future, it could be a little more sweet than bitter, or perhaps more bitter than sweet.
8
‘The Quick and the Dead’ (1995)
It might well be something akin to cheating to put The Quick and the Dead here, since the whole premise involves just a bunch of showdowns, effectively, but from another point of view, that makes it a necessary one to single out. The setting here is a town that’s hosting a quick draw competition, and various people show up to compete (some of them quirky and with their own dramatic backstories), and it doesn’t take long for the competition to become deadly.
People associate Sam Raimi mostly with the horror genre, or maybe the superhero one, thanks largely to his Spider-Man trilogy, but The Quick and the Dead also showed he had what it took to make a great Western, too. The cast here is also to die for, and speaking of dying, that’s what many of the characters played by said cast members do.
7
‘Tombstone’ (1993)
An overall beefy and largely exciting Western, Tombstone packs a lot of bombast, drama, and entertainment value into a single movie, probably being the definitive film about the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral. It’s partly about that, at least. Tombstone goes a little more epic in scope, having a narrative that continues beyond that particular showdown/battle.
It doesn’t go as sprawling as Wyatt Earp (1994), though, and that’s for the best, since that movie was a good deal messier and not as satisfying as Tombstone. Past the big gunfight, you’ve got some other tense one-on-one showdowns throughout Tombstone, so it’s a bit of a The Quick and the Dead situation, once more, since you’re spoiled for choice if you’re the kind of person who really likes watching Westerns mostly for such sequences.
6
‘Unforgiven’ (1992)
Since it’s very much a revisionist Western, you don’t get the typically dramatic or even cinematic showdown toward the end of Unforgiven, but you get something that still qualifies, since the protagonist does indeed confront the antagonist. It’s done in a realistic way, and it’s more focused on building tension than it is providing spectacle, since Unforgiven – for all its runtime – is pretty darn down-and-dirty, by Western movie standards.
Little Bill had it coming, and it’s a testament to how good Gene Hackman was in the role that you really feel catharsis when he’s finally gunned down… but not just catharsis, because the weight of the murder is still felt, and Little Bill, though awful, never felt cartoonishly evil. It’s hard to put into words why this finale is so good, and the fairly rambly last 130-ish words are testament to that, but if you’ve seen Unforgiven, you probably get it; you’ve seen the light and all.
5
‘For a Few Dollars More’ (1965)
Each movie in the Dollars trilogy is better than the last, and as such, it’s not too surprising that each one has a subsequently better showdown at its end. And A Fistful of Dollars was already mentioned a few places ago, so For a Few Dollars More overall improves what was already really good. There’s a more personal revenge story that eventually emerges as the central one in For a Few Dollars More, but it takes time for all the pieces to fall into place.
Once they do, you kind of know what’s coming showdown-wise, but that doesn’t make the vengeance-fueled duel any less satisfying to see play out. Clint Eastwood is great here, but Lee Van Cleef’s character is the one who has far more personal reasons to go after the main bad guy here, so even if you’re the biggest Eastwood fan in the world, it’s in no way a disappointment to see his character essentially mediate the final duel (and that music… Ennio Morricone pretty much never disappoints).
4
‘High Noon’ (1952)
Because of its structure, High Noon is more about the build-up to a showdown than it is about the showdown itself, with things very purposefully progressing toward noon (as the title suggests) in what’s pretty close to real time. There’s a sheriff who has to deal with the fact that a man he once imprisoned is heading to his town for revenge, and he spends much of the film trying to get help to defend himself.
He’s unsuccessful, and so has to pretty much go it alone, only getting a brief assist from his (usually) pacifist wife. It plays out in a way that feels very grounded for a film of its time, and that’s one reason why High Noon holds up so well, for a Western of its age, with the grittiness and intensity of the finale here feeling a little like the previously described one for Unforgiven.
3
‘The Mercenary’ (1968)
You could accuse The Mercenary of borrowing a little too much from the showdown in For a Few Dollars More, so putting it ahead of that one is potentially questionable, but also, too bad, because it’s here. And it’s awesome. One of the participants in the showdown, in this instance, is dressed as a clown, and the music used is arguably even better than the music used in For a Few Dollars More.
Here, you’ve got someone mediating a high-stakes – and inevitable – final duel, and the tension is all built so well through the way it’s edited, acted, and scored.
Well, no, that feels like too bold a claim. Ennio Morricone’s contributions to both showdowns are equally amazing, and so maybe it’s just the clown factor that gives The Mercenary the edge. You’ve got someone mediating a high-stakes – and inevitable – final duel, and the tension is all built so well through the way it’s edited, acted, and scored. Also, if you’re watching it and the music sounds familiar to you, that’s possibly because Quentin Tarantino repurposed it quite effectively in Kill Bill: Vol. 2, for the sequence where the Bride punches her way out of a coffin after being buried underground.
2
‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968)
Once Upon a Time in the West does something kind of similar to For a Few Dollars More, with it slowly taking its time to showcase just why one character wants revenge on another, and then the final duel involving the pair of them clashing. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s more drawn out here, and that the music used is even better, but Once Upon a Time in the West probably does it all even better than For a Few Dollars More.
You’re really spoiled here, because the opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West is also an all-timer, and is technically another showdown. There are quite a few set pieces sprinkled throughout this slow-paced (but never boring) movie, and each of them could technically qualify as a great shootout or showdown. But it’s the final one – between Frank and Harmonica – that stands as the greatest in the overall movie, and up there among the very best of all time, too.
1
‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966)
The Mexican standoff to end all Mexican standoffs, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly expertly builds up to a massive three-way showdown between the three characters alluded to in the film’s title, and it’s immense. The first time you watch the movie, it’s one of the most suspenseful sequences you’ll ever experience, since it feels like there are so many ways a showdown of this kind can go, depending on who shoots first, and who each person chooses to target.
On a rewatch and in hindsight, it’s somewhat funny how suspenseful it is, since you learn that the game was rigged by “the Good,” and it was always going to a certain way, so long as “the Bad” didn’t shoot first. The showdown here works on both counts, as something undeniably thrilling initially and then darkly funny/silly if you revisit the film (but even then, it’s still easy to get swept up in – and blown away by – the editing, music, and flow of the sequence).