The Highest-Rated Westerns On Metacritic Are Surprising

What's so great about Westerns? Well, for starters, the genre's approach toward morality might seem clear-cut at a glance, but the best Westerns languish in morally grey landscapes and constantly redefine codes of honor. Violence is often at the heart of these stories because, without this component, we would be painting a sanitized and inauthentic picture of a society on the cusp of change. This violence can manifest in different forms and reflect bitter truths about human history, or it can simply highlight universal human traumas from a specific point of view. Moreover, lawless spaces demand lawless men who are in tune with the West and its ethos, and sometimes, these men undergo a transformation. The rich history of Westerns extends beyond the moving image, with writers like Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx having reshaped the definitions of how Westerns can reveal the worst impulses in humanity.

Deciding which Westerns deserve to be dubbed the "best" is futile, as the genre features a wide variety of stories. For example, the Clint Eastwood-starring "Unforgiven" grapples with complex morality by yanking a reformed gunfighter back into the world of bounty-hunting, while Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" explores the concept of bitter revenge. Meanwhile, titles like Howard Hawks' "Red River" underline the clash between tradition and modernity through generational conflict, all while challenging the idea of what makes a hero. The larger Western genre has undergone considerable shifts over the years too, with the physical violence that is often at its center overlapping with examinations of cultural and racial oppression.

If we look at a website like Rotten Tomatoes, then the highest-rated Westerns of all time are titles like "Stagecoach" and "My Darling Clementine" (which, as you would expect, both have a 100 precent "Fresh" score from critics). On Metacritic, the two highest-rated Westerns are somewhat more surprising, with "The Wild Bunch" and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" topping the charts at 98 percent each. So, let's talk about these films!

Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" is an experience and a half. A pervasive nihilism connects every event in the film, but this is not a world completely devoid of hope. Texan Pike Bishop (William Holden) wants to retire after a final robbery stint as an outlaw, only to end up being ambushed in a bloody shootout that leaves most of his men dead. Pike and a handful of survivors then head to Mexico in search of something better, but they're met with a vicious threat as soon as they arrive. If you wade through the tense confrontations, shootouts, and double-crossings that occur after this point, "The Wild Bunch" might not seem special from a narrative perspective. But the magic lies in Peckinpah's treatment of these classic tropes, which are conveyed through quick-cut editing and multi-angle framing (which were not mainstream when the film was released in 1969). This creative ingenuity makes even the most overplayed ideas seem fresh, such as Pike's dramatic declarations about loyalty, and how the absence of it makes an animal out of man.

However, Peckinpah's epic revisionist Western is far from perfect. The brand of machismo celebrated here is rather outdated, while the electrifyingly shot sequences depicting violence reinforce this traditional worldview. Brutality, loyalty, and morally ambiguous heroism are embraced by the film's central group of outlaws, who make their personal philosophies known with unflinching unity and a hail of bullets. There's also a deliberate, extended focus on visceral imagery, such as a scorpion being devoured by ants while a group of children looks on with sadistic glee. Is Peckinpah condemning our desensitized apathy toward violence? Or is he spelling out the fact that we're doomed because of it? While this is up for debate, "The Wild Bunch" offers thrills, shocks, and fury, taking you on a roller coaster of emotions that's bound to draw you in.

Next up, we have "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," a completely different kind of Western about greed. Based on B. Traven's novel of the same name, John Huston's film unfolds like a straightforward yet riveting parable about greed. Humphrey Bogart stars as Fred Dobbs, a dubious, scheming gold prospector who's searching for an opportunity when he travels with his partner Bob (Tim Holt) to the mountains of Mexico. However, before any of that happens, both Fred and Bob are initially cheated out of their wages from a previous job and forced to earn them back the hard (and violent) way. It is only when the pair heads out in search of gold that their true hearts are made known to us. Suspicious and paranoid, these men scheme against others and each other before ultimately getting involved in all sorts of shenanigans and, in the end, undergoing a terribly rude awakening.

Playing such a conniving character consumed by greed was a gamble for Bogart, who usually embodied heroic or morally grey figures (whom we end up rooting for) up until this point in his career. Fred's transformation doesn't occur overnight, of course; there is plenty of foreshadowing in the form of literal events and visual imagery, accompanied by a slow-burn corruption that gives way to greed-induced paranoia. One would think that two men who know what it is like to be hoodwinked and robbed of their earnings would understand the pitfalls of greed, but are we ever so quick to learn? If anything, the fact that Fred and Bob were cheated at the start of the film reinforces their paranoid suspicions. They know that their fellow man is not trustworthy and that the only way to covet gold is to snatch it out of someone else's hands.

The focal and thematic contrast between "The Wild Bunch" and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" reflects the diverse range of material the Western genre can accommodate. While one film frames its outlaw renegades as imperfect men of honor, the other completely strips its two working-class leads of their core humanity. Despite these innate differences, Peckinpah's film was actually inspired by Huston's Neo-Western, highlighting the complex web of influences that can help shape standouts in the genre. So long as these films continue to capture the complexity of the human experience, there will always be more space for additional entries in this genre.