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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Special Edition)
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Starring: Newman, Paul Redford, Robert Redford, Robert Cassidy, Ted Mars, Kenneth Ross, Katharine Jones, Henry Martin, Strother Martin, Strother Mars, Kenneth
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Director: Hill, George Roy	Rating: PG	Running Time: 1 Hour 50 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 8.2/10 (IMDB)	Color Stereo

Amazon.com essential video This 1969 film has never lost its popularity or its unusual appeal as a star-driven Western that tinkers with the genre's conventions and comes up with something both terrifically entertaining and--typical of its period--a tad paranoid. Paul Newman plays the legendary outlaw Butch Cassidy as an eternal optimist and self-styled visionary, conjuring dreams of banks just ripe for the picking all over the world. Robert Redford is his more levelheaded partner, the sharpshooting Sundance Kid. The film, written by William Goldman (The Princess Bride) and directed by George Roy Hill (The Sting), basically begins as a freewheeling story about robbing trains but soon becomes a chase as a relentless posse--always seen at a great distance like some remote authority--forces Butch and Sundance into the hills and, finally, Bolivia. Weakened a little by feel-good inclinations (a scene involving bicycle tricks and the song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" is sort of Hollywood flower power), the movie maintains an interesting tautness, and the chemistry between Redford and Newman is rare. (A factoid: Newman first offered the Sundance part to Jack Lemmon.) --Tom Keogh --This text refers to the VHS Tape edition.

Dances with Wolves
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Starring: Costner, Kevin McDonnell, Mary Greene, Graham Grant, Rodney A. Westerman, Floyd Red Crow Pastorelli, Robert Studi, Wes Rocket, Charles Rocket, Charles Herman, Jimmy
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Director: Costner, Kevin	Rating: PG-13	Running Time: 181 minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 7.7/10 (IMDB)	Color Stereo

Amazon.com essential video Kevin Costner's 1990 epic won a bundle of Oscars for a moving, engrossing story of a white soldier (Costner) who singlehandedly mans a post in the 1870 Dakotas, and becomes a part of the Lakota Sioux community who live nearby. The film may not be a masterpiece, but it is far more than the sum of good intentions. The characters are strong, the development of relationships is both ambitious and careful, the love story between Costner and Mary McDonnell's character is captivating. Only the third-act portrait of white intruders as morons feels overbearing, but even that leads to a terribly moving conclusion. Costner's direction is assured, the balance of action and intimacy is perfect--what more could anyone want outside of an unqualified masterpiece? --Tom Keogh Description Rewarded for his heroism in the Civil War, Lt. John Dunbar wants to see the American frontier before it is gone. He is assigned to an abandoned fort, where a Sioux tribe is his only neighbor. Overcoming the language barrier and their mutual fear and distrust, Dunbar and the proud Indians gradually become friends. Winner of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, Kevin Costner.

Fistful of Dollars, A
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Starring: Eastwood, Clint Volont�, Gian Maria Volont�, Gian Maria Brega, Mario Koch, Marianna Prieto, Antonio Petito, Enzo Lozano, Margarita Lozano, Margarita Stefanelli, Benito
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Director: Leone, Sergio	Rating: R	Running Time: 1 Hour 40 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 7.7/10 (IMDB)	Color Stereo

Amazon.com essential video A Fistful of Dollars launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Based on Akira Kurosawa's 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo, it scored a resounding success (in Italy in 1964 and the U.S. in 1967), as did its sequels, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The advertising campaign promoted Eastwood's character--laconic, amoral, dangerous--as the Man with No Name (though in the film he's clearly referred to as Joe), and audiences loved the movie's refreshing new take on the Western genre. Gone are the pieties about making the streets safe for women and children. Instead it's every man for himself. Striking, too, was a new emphasis on violence, with stylized, almost balletic gunfights and baroque touches such as Eastwood's armored breastplate. The Dollars films had a marked influence on the Hollywood Western--for example, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch--but their most enduring legacy is Clint Eastwood himself. --Edward Buscombe

For A Few Dollars More
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Starring: Eastwood, Clint Cleef, Lee Van Volont�, Gian Maria Kinski, Klaus Dexter, Rosemarie Brega, Mario Sambrell, Aldo Pistilli, Luigi Pistilli, Luigi Krup, Mara
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Director: Leone, Sergio	Rating: R	Running Time: 2 Hours 11 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 7.9/10 (IMDB)	Color Stereo

Amazon.com essential video A ringing instance of a sequel far outstripping its predecessor, Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More takes the lethal antihero from A Fistful of Dollars, gives him both a rival and an adversary worthy of sharing a gun-blazing corrida, and ratchets up the stylization to something approaching grandeur. This time the Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood) is a bounty hunter whose desert Southwest killing ground is suddenly crowded by the presence of an older, black-clad shootist (Lee Van Cleef). Individually and together, they terminate sundry grotesques while closing in on their biggest quarry, a memorably insane bandit called El Indio (Gian Maria Volont� is brilliant). There's just enough plot to imbue Van Cleef with genuine mystery, a dark avenging angel from a lost past whose pull would supply the emotional core of Leone's later masterworks Once upon a Time in the West and Once upon a Time in America. Leone's bravura widescreen compositions are breathtaking, and Ennio Morricone's music score--tinged with lunatic religiosity--is his first great one. --Richard T. Jameson

Frank and Jesse
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Starring: Lowe, Rob Paxton, Bill Travis, Randy Atherton, William Arquette, Alexis Askew, Luke Flanery, Sean Patrick Arquette, Alexis Arquette, Alexis Pyper-Ferguson, John
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Director: Boris, Robert	Rating: R	Running Time: 1 Hour 40 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 5.5/10 (IMDB)	Color Stereo

Amazon.com The story of Jesse and Frank James, the real-life robbers whose exploits earned them a Robin Hood reputation, has been portrayed in dozens of films that are more faithful to myth than to history. Only in the revisionist 1970s did the romantic shadings come off in a few genre-busting examples (notably The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid and The Long Riders). Oddly enough this 1994 feature takes more than a few factual liberties to restore the romantic portrait of the bank-robbing brothers. Four years after the Civil War, in a South crawling with carpetbaggers and occupied by Union troops, the hotheaded Jesse (Rob Lowe) and his clearheaded older brother Frank (Bill Paxton) take to the trail in a campaign of bank jobs, train robberies, and stage holdups while evading the dogged efforts of Allan Pinkerton (William Atherton) and his detective agency. Writer-director Robert Boris presents the boys as heroes of the defeated South, gentleman robbers avenging the pillage of their people by the railroad and bank concerns pouring in from the North and pursued by a maniacally driven Pinkerton on a personal quest for revenge. In the wake of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven this film comes off as old fashioned and a little naive, but the measured pace and the casting of country singer Randy Travis (who plays Cole Younger and narrates with a voice like molasses) gives the film, in moments, the intimacy of a ballad. --Sean Axmaker

Good, the Bad & the Ugly, The (Extended Version Collector's Set)
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Starring: Eastwood, Clint Cleef, Lee Van Cleef, Lee Van Pistilli, Luigi Rassimov, Rada Giuffre, Aldo Alonso, Chelo Brega, Mario Brega, Mario Scarchilli, Claudio
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Director: Leone, Sergio	Rating: R	Running Time: 2 Hours 59 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 8.7/10 (IMDB)	Color Stereo

Amazon.com essential video Clint Eastwood (the Man with No Name) is good, Lee Van Cleef (Angel Eyes Sentenza) is bad, and Eli Wallach (Tuco Benedito Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez) is ugly in the final chapter of Sergio Leone's trilogy of spaghetti westerns (the first two were A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More). In this sweeping film, the characters form treacherous alliances in a ruthless quest for Confederate gold. Leone is sometimes underrated as a director, but the excellent resolution on this digital video disc should enhance appreciation of his considerable photographic talent and gorgeous widescreen compositions. Ennio Morricone's jokey score is justifiably famous. The digital video disc includes about a quarter-hour of footage not seen in the original release. --This text refers to the DVD edition. DVD features This two-disc special edition presents the restored, extended English-language version of Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, now clocking in at almost three hours. It includes some 14 minutes of previously cut scenes, with both Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach returning to the editing suite in 2003 to add their voices to scenes that had never before been dubbed into English (Wallach's voice is noticeably that of a much older man in these additional sequences). The extra material contains... read more

Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The
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Starring: Eastwood, Clint Cleef, Lee Van Cleef, Lee Van Brega, Mario Giuffre, Aldo Alonso, Chelo Pistilli, Luigi Rassimov, Rada Rassimov, Rada Scarchilli, Claudio
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Director: Leone, Sergio	Rating: R	Running Time: 2 Hours 41 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 8.7/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Grey Owl
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Starring: Brosnan, Pierce Galipeau, Annie Arcand, Nathaniel Vrana, Vlasta Fox, David Powell, Charles Cole, Stephanie Asherson, Renee Asherson, Renee Vandercruys, Al
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Director: Attenborough, Richard	Rating: PG-13	Running Time: 1 Hour 58 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 5.7/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com Richard Attenborough's passion weighs so heavily on every frame of Grey Owl, the true story of a pioneering conservationist in the Canadian wilderness, that it tends to smother the characters. Pierce Brosnan is stiff, deliberate and terse as Archie Grey Owl, a part Scotch Native American adopted and raised by a Canadian Ojibwa tribe. He gets by as a trapper, hunting guide, and sometime writer, but becomes an internationally revered activist in the 1930s when he publishes a book on the vanishing wilderness. Annie Galipeau is the native Canadian woman who sees through his tough hide and secretive quiet: "Yeah, I know. You're a loner. You have to live in the wilderness. I hear it everyday." But she doesn't pierce his most zealously guarded secret, a distracting subplot that most of the audience figures out in no time. Attenborough's hushed reverence for Archie's dream slows an already lugubrious drama, and Brosnan all too often comes off as a walking clich�, his flat speech and long, slow stares a Brit's idea of a movie Indian. The real star of the film is the magnificent Canadian wilderness: carpets of forests, clear crystal lakes, and vast blue skies. There's no doubting Attenborough's good intentions, and his love for the wilderness is felt in every gorgeous frame, but somewhere in the forest he loses track of his story. --Sean Axmaker

Hang 'em High
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Starring: Eastwood, Clint Stevens, Inger Sr., Ed Begley Hingle, Pat Golonka, Arlene MacArthur, James Johnson, Ben Jones, L.Q. Jones, L.Q. Golonka, Arlene
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Director: Post, Ted	Rating: PG-13	Running Time: 1 Hour 55 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 6.7/10 (IMDB)	Color Stereo

Amazon.com After starring in the now-legendary trilogy of spaghetti Westerns for Italian director Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood became a box-office star and imported the style of those classic shoot-'em-ups for this 1967 Western directed by Ted Post, with whom Eastwood had worked during their days on the television series Rawhide. Eastwood plays an innocent rancher who is mistaken for a cattle rustler and sentenced to hang by an angry mob. When he is saved from the noose by a passing lawman, he embarks on a renegade campaign of vengeance against the men who attempted to lynch him. Hang 'Em High offers a number of memorable moments and stylistic flourishes, and features a superb supporting cast of Western veterans, including Ben Johnson, Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, L.Q. Jones, and the "Skipper" himself, Alan Hale Jr. Made just three years before Dirty Harry, the film marked a turning point for Eastwood, who would soon move into a prolific period of contemporary thrillers. --Jeff Shannon

High Noon (Collector's Edition)
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Starring: Cooper, Gary Kelly, Grace Mitchell, Thomas Bridges, Lloyd Kelly, Grace Cooper, Gary Kruger, Otto Jurado, Katy Jurado, Katy Chaney, Lon , Jr.
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Director: Zinnemann, Fred	Rating: NR	Running Time: 1 Hour 25 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 8.3/10 (IMDB)	Black & White Stereo

Amazon.com essential video One of the greatest Westerns ever made gets the deluxe treatment on this superior disc from Republic Home Video's Silver Screen Classics line of special-edition DVDs. Written by Carl Foreman (who was later blacklisted during the anticommunist hearings of the '50s) and superbly directed by Fred Zinnemann, this 1952 classic stars Gary Cooper as just-married lawman Will Kane, who is about to retire as a small-town sheriff and begin a new life with his bride (Grace Kelly) when he learns that gunslinger Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) is due to arrive at high noon to settle an old score. Kane seeks assistance from deputies and townsfolk, but soon realizes he'll have to stand alone in his showdown with Miller and his henchmen. Innovative for its time, the suspenseful story unfolds in approximate real time (from 10:40 a.m. to high noon in an 84-minute film), and many interpreted Foreman's drama as an allegorical reflection of apathy and passive acceptance of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist campaign. Political underpinnings aside, this remains a milestone of its genre (often referred to as the first "adult" Western), and Cooper is flawless in his Oscar-winning role. The first-rate DVD gives this landmark film all the respect it deserves, beginning with a digitally remastered transfer from the original film negative. Additional features include the exclusive documentary The Making of High Noon, hosted by film historian Leonard Maltin and featuring interviews with the late Lloyd Bridges (who played Cooper's rival ex-deputy), director Fred Zinnemann, and producer Stanley Kramer. Also included is the original theatrical trailer and a special chapter stop highlighting the Oscar-winning song "Do Not Forsake Me." Offered in English and dubbed French and Spanish, with English closed-captioning or Spanish and French subtitles. --Jeff Shannon --This text refers to the DVD edition.

High Plains Drifter
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Starring: Eastwood, Clint Bloom, Verna Hill, Marianna Curtis, Billy Ryan, Mitchell Ging, Jack Gierasch, Stefan Hartley, Ted Hartley, Ted Walker, Scott
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Director: Eastwood, Clint	Rating: R	Running Time: 1 Hour 46 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 7.4/10 (IMDB)	Color Stereo

Amazon.com essential video Clint Eastwood's second film as a director (and his first Western) is a variation on the "man with no name" theme, starring Eastwood as the drifter known only as "the Stranger." He rides into the desert town of Lagos and is quickly attacked by three gunmen. Recovering with the aid of a local dwarf (a memorable role for Billy Curtis), the Stranger is hired by the intimidated townsfolk to fend off a band of violent ex-convicts. After teaching the citizens self-defense and instructing them to paint the entire town red and rename it "Hell," the Stranger vanishes. He reappears when the marauding criminals arrive, and delivers justice and teaches the townsfolk a harsh lesson about moral obligation. Is he a figure from their past or a kind of supernatural avenger? Combining humor with action, High Plains Drifter is both a serious and tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Westerns that made Eastwood a household name. --Jeff Shannon

Jeremiah Johnson
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Starring: Redford, Robert Geer, Will Gierasch, Stefan Albee, Josh McLerie, Allyn Ann Tyner, Charles Bolton, Delle Martinez, Joaquin Martinez, Joaquin Clark, Matt
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Director: Pollack, Sydney	Rating: PG	Running Time: 1 Hour 56 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 7.3/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com essential video After they first worked together on the 1966 film This Property Is Condemned, director Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford continued their long-lasting collaboration with this 1972 drama set during the mid-1800s, about one man's rugged effort to shed the burden of civilization and learn to survive in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. Will Geer is perfectly cast as the seasoned trapper who teaches Jeremiah Johnson (Redford) how to survive against harsh winters, close encounters with grizzly bears, and hostile Crow Indians. In the course of his adventure, Johnson marries the daughter of a Flathead Indian chief, forms a makeshift family, and ultimately assumes a mythic place in Rocky Mountain folklore. Shot entirely on location in Utah, the film boasts an abundance of breathtaking widescreen scenery, and the story (despite a PG rating) doesn't flinch from the brutality of the wilderness. In addition to the original theatrical trailer, remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, and informative production notes, the DVD also includes The Saga of Jeremiah Johnson, a promotional documentary on the making of the film. --Jeff Shannon

Magnificent Seven, The
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Starring: Brynner, Yul McQueen, Steve McQueen, Steve Bissell, Whit Bronson, Charles Wallach, Eli Buchholz, Horst Coburn, James Coburn, James Dexter, Brad
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Director: Sturges, John	Rating: PG-13	Running Time: 2 Hours 8 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 7.8/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com essential video Akira Kurosawa's rousing Seven Samurai was a natural for an American remake--after all, the codes and conventions of ancient Japan and the Wild West (at least the mythical movie West) are not so very far apart. Thus The Magnificent Seven effortlessly turns samurai into cowboys (the same trick worked more than once: Kurosawa's Yojimbo became Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars). The beleaguered denizens of a Mexican village, weary of attacks by banditos, hire seven gunslingers to repel the invaders once and for all. The gunmen are cool and capable, with most of the actors playing them just on the cusp of '60s stardom: Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn. The man who brings these warriors together is Yul Brynner, the baddest bald man in the West. There's nothing especially stylish about the approach of veteran director John Sturges (The Great Escape), but the storytelling is clear and strong, and the charisma of the young guns fairly flies off the screen. If that isn't enough to awaken the 12-year-old kid inside anyone, the unforgettable Elmer Bernstein music will do it: bum-bum-ba-bum, bum-ba-bum-ba-bum.... Followed by three inferior sequels, Return of the Seven, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and The Magnificent Seven Ride! --Robert Horton --This text refers to the VHS Tape edition.

Man from Snowy River, The
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Starring: Douglas, Kirk Burlinson, Tom Thornton, Sigrid Donovan, Terence
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Director: Miller, George	Rating:	Running Time: 20th Century Fox Home Video
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Category: Westerns	User Rating:	Color Mono

Description: After his father's death, young Jim Craig leaves his home in the Snowy River valley to work for a wealthy landlord, who happens to be the estranged brother of Jim's mentor, a grizzled old prospector. While fighting to earn his spurs by breaking a herd of wild horses, Jim falls in love with his employer's spunky daughter. A sequel of this family favorite, Return to Snowy River, followed. DVD Features: Region 1 Keep Case Full Frame - 1.33 Single Side - Dual Layer

Maverick
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Starring: Gibson, Mel Foster, Jodie Garner, James Garner, James Coburn, James Greene, Graham Molina, Alfred Taylor, Dub Taylor, Dub Smith, Paul
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Director: Donner, Richard	Rating: PG	Running Time: 2 Hours 7 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 6.7/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com essential video Inspired by the 1960s TV series that starred James Garner in the title role, this lightweight Western from 1994 proved to be a surprising box-office hit. Well, maybe not such a big surprise, since it's from the star and director of the Lethal Weapon movies, and operates with a similar combination of mainstream plotting and easygoing humor. Mel Gibson stars as card-playing gunslinger Brett Maverick, who meets up with wily gambler Annabelle Bransford (Jodie Foster) and a marshal named Zane Cooper (James Garner, trading his old role to Gibson) on his way to the World Series of poker in St. Louis. Maverick's trying to raise the $5,000 needed to join the high-stakes contest, but that's easier said than done due to a lot of unscrupulous competition and a twisting plot of tricks and deceptions. It's all played for laughs and action, so the movie never wears out its welcome, despite a running time that could've used a good trimming. It's also fun to see the rapport between Gibson and Garner, as if the present and former Mavericks were a kind of surrogate son and father, bonded by their mutual skill in charming and conning their way through tight spots. Director Richard Donner also pays tribute to old Westerns by casting veterans of the genre in cameo roles (including Bert Remsen, Dub Taylor, and Denver Pyle), and Gibson's Lethal Weapon costar Danny Glover pops in for a surprise appearance. None of this really adds up to much since the movie makes no pretense about taking itself seriously, but that's precisely why audiences found it so entertaining. --Jeff Shannon

Once Upon a Time in the West
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Starring: Fonda, Henry Bronson, Charles Fonda, Henry Stoppa, Paolo Strode, Woody Jack Elam Wynn, Keenan Wolff, Frank Wolff, Frank Robards, Jason
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Director: Leone, Sergio	Rating: PG	Running Time: 2 Hours 45 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 8.6/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com essential video The so-called spaghetti Western achieved its apotheosis in Sergio Leone's magnificently mythic (and utterly outlandish) Once upon a Time in the West. After a series of international hits starring Clint Eastwood (from A Fistful of Dollars to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), Leone outdid himself with this spectacular, larger-than-life, horse-operatic epic about how the West was won. (And make no mistake: this is the wide, wide West, folks--so the widescreen/letterboxed version is strongly recommended.) The unholy trinity of Italian cinema--Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Dario Argento--concocted the story about a woman (Claudia Cardinale) hanging onto her land in hopes that the transcontinental railroad would reach her before a steely-eyed, black-hearted killer (Fonda) does. (The film's advertising slogan was: "There were three men in her life. One to take her ... one to love her ... and one to kill her.") Meanwhile, Leone shoots his stars' faces as if they were expansive Western landscapes, and their towering bodies as if they were looming rock formations in John Ford's Monument Valley. --Jim Emerson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. DVD features The powers behind the DVD of this Western masterpiece pay due respect to filmmaker Sergio Leone's style right down to the DVD menus: calm, slow building, and pierced by a gun blast. The location gallery is a wonderful and unique extra consisting of images of filming locations then and 30 some years later, scored by Ennio Morricone's haunting music. The new hour-long documentary (uselessly cut into three parts) is packed with new interviews from surviving members of the cast and crew (including... read more

Open Range
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Starring: Costner, Kevin Duvall, Robert Duvall, Robert Gambon, Michael Russo, James Jeter, Michael Benrubi, Abraham Luna, Diego Luna, Diego Cerkiewicz, Alexis
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Director: Costner, Kevin	Rating: R	Running Time: 2 Hours 19 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 7.5/10 (IMDB)	Color Stereo

Amazon.com Released almost exactly 11 years after Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, Kevin Costner's Open Range proved yet again that the Western is the classic American genre. While it lacks the thematic impact of Eastwood's masterpiece, Costner's first film since 1997's ill-fated The Postman returns the actor/director of Dances With Wolves to the open prairies of America--in this case the free-range frontier of 1882--where legal "free-grazing" cattle drives were falling prey to empire-building land-owners. In the wake of territorial murder, free-grazing cowboys Boss (Robert Duvall) and Charley (Costner) seek vengeful justice against the ruthless rancher (Michael Gambon) who threatens their law-abiding survival. A feisty ally (the late Michael Jeter, in his next-to-final film role) and a doctor's sister (Annette Bening) offer support during climactic shootouts, masterfully staged with the shock and suddenness of real-life gunfire. Rich in character development and thick-hided humor, this handsome production redeemed Costner's directorial career with a well-told story (by Craig Storper, based on Lauran Paine's novel The Open Range Men), flawless performances, and stunning Canadian locations. --Jeff Shannon

Outlaw Josey Wales, The
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Starring: Eastwood, Clint Locke, Sondra George, Chief Dan Locke, Sondra McKinney, Bill Vernon, John Trueman, Paula Bottoms, Sam Bottoms, Sam Eastwood. Clint
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Director: Eastwood, Clint	Rating: PG	Running Time: 136 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 7.6/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com essential video During the Civil War, Union "Redlegs" attack Southerner Josey Wales's dirt farm and wipe out his family. Seeking vengeance, Wales throws in with a company of Reb guerrillas. Tagged as a renegade after the surrender, he flees west into the vastness of the Indian Territories, where, quite unintentionally, he finds himself cast as the straight-shooting paterfamilias of an ever-growing, spectacularly motley community of misfits and castaways. Which is to say, Josey's personal quest for survival and something like peace of mind evolves into a funky, multicultural allegory of the healing of America. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Clint Eastwood's 31st film as an actor, 20th as international star, and 5th as director, was the first to win him widespread respect. Critics had grumbled when the producer-star replaced Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) in the director's chair a week into shooting. They ended up cheering when Eastwood delivered both his most sympathetic performance to date and--with the heroic collaboration of cinematographer Bruce Surtees--an impressive Panavision epic that stresses the scruffiness, rather than the scenic splendors, of frontier life. Though it's been honored with a place in the National Film Registry, Josey Wales is good, not great, Eastwood. The big-gun fetishism can get tiresome, and too many characters exist only to serve as six-gun (and at one point Gatling gun) fodder. But mostly the film is agreeably eccentric, and almost furtively sweet in spirit--a key transitional title in the Eastwood filmography, and one of his most entertaining. --Richard T. Jameson

Return to Snowy River
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Starring: Burlinson, Tom Thornton, Sigrid Dennehy, Brian Thornton, Sigrid Hembrow, Mark Marshall, Bryan McConnochie, Rhys Cummins, Peter Cummins, Peter Barry, Tony
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Director: Burrowes, Geoff	Rating: PG	Running Time: 1 Hour 39 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 5.5/10 (IMDB)	Color Stereo

Description Australia's breathtaking Victoria Alps set the backdrop for this spectacular epic saga. Tom Burlinson and Sigrid Thornton, two of Australia's brightest film talents, star in a fast-paced, action-packed story of a stormy romance caught up in a violent feud between landowners. Acclaimed actor Brian Dennehy (LEGAL EAGLES, COCOON) gives a gripping performance as the powerful patriarch determined to keep them apart. Visually unforgettable and packed with rugged adventure and masterful stuntwork, RETURN TO SNOWY RIVER is a thrilling and memorable film!

Tombstone (Vista Series)
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Starring: Russell, Kurt Kilmer, Val Biehn, Michael Paxton, Bill Elliott, Sam Russell, Kurt Elliott, Sam Kilmer, Val Kilmer, Val Lang, Stephen
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Director: Cosmatos, George P.	Rating: R	Running Time: 2 Hours 14 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 7.4/10 (IMDB)	Color DTS Surround Sound

Amazon.com This Western has become a modest cult favorite since its release in 1993, when the film was met with mixed reviews but the performances of Kurt Russell (as Wyatt Earp) and especially Val Kilmer, for his memorably eccentric performance as the dying gunslinger Doc Holliday, garnered high praise. The movie opens with Wyatt Earp trying to put his violent past behind him, living happily in Tombstone with his brothers and the woman (Dana Delany) who puts his soul at ease. But a murderous gang called the Cowboys has burst on the scene, and Earp can't keep his gun belt off any longer. The plot sounds routine, and in many ways it is, but Western buffs won't mind a bit thanks to a fine cast and some well-handled action on the part of Rambo director George P. Cosmatos, who has yet to make a better film than this. --Jeff Shannon --This text refers to the VHS Tape edition.

Unforgiven
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Starring: Eastwood, Clint Hackman, Gene Alder, Eugene Freeman, Morgan Harris, Richard Woolvett, Jaimz Fisher, Frances Levine, Anna Levine, Anna Campbell, Rob
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Director: Eastwood, Clint	Rating: R	Running Time: 2 Hours 11 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 8.1/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com essential video Winner of four Academy Awards, including best picture, director, supporting actor, and best editing, Clint Eastwood's 1992 masterpiece stands as one of the greatest and most thematically compelling Westerns ever made. "The movie summarized everything I feel about the Western," said Eastwood at the time of the film's release. "The moral is the concern with gunplay." To illustrate that theme, Eastwood stars as a retired, once-ruthless killer-turned-gentle-widower and hog farmer. He accepts one last bounty-hunter mission--to find the men who brutalized a prostitute--to help support his two motherless children. Joined by his former partner (Morgan Freeman) and a cocky greenhorn (Jaimz Woolvett), he takes on a corrupt sheriff (Oscar winner Gene Hackman) in a showdown that makes the viewer feel the full impact of violence and its corruption of the soul. Dedicated to Eastwood's mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel and featuring a colorful role for Richard Harris, it's arguably Eastwood's crowning directorial achievement. --Jeff Shannon

Wyatt Earp (Two-Disc Special Edition)
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Starring: Costner, Kevin Quaid, Dennis Hackman, Gene Hackman, Gene Quaid, Dennis Williams, JoBeth Fahey, Jeff Madsen, Michael Madsen, Michael Pullman, Bill
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Director: Kasdan, Lawrence	Rating: PG-13	Running Time: 3 Hours 10 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 6.1/10 (IMDB)	Color Stereo

Amazon.com This massive, in-depth study of the dark Western icon comes off with mixed results. Trying to capture the whole life, (warts and all) of the lawman-criminal-brother-fortune hunter, director Lawrence Kasdan gains points for sheer scale, giving us a rich epic painted in dark colors with gritty settings. But the visual poetry and extensive foreshadowing ruin the dramatic drive. Some scenes have as much impact as stalker movies; you're just waiting for someone to get knocked off. As Earp, Kevin Costner is not afraid to look rumpled and play colorlessly (as in The Bodyguard), but it saps the energy of this 3-hour-plus film. The only relief is Dennis Quaid as a droll Doc Holiday, a much more engaging character. New faces Linden Ashby and Joanna Going (as an Earp brother and a lover, respectively) are solid finds, though the remainder of the female cast is barely given anything to do. Best is the first half, with Costner, as hip as he was in his Silverado days, going through a series of ups and downs until he accidentally finds his profession. Great set design (Ida Random) utilizes dozens of similar settings that always look distinctive. Recommended to fans of the star and the genre, but the story never justifies its length. --Doug Thomas --This text refers to the VHS Tape edition. DVD features You can only find the expanded 212-minute version of this Western on VHS. For the DVD debut, there is a fine-looking remastered print of the original 190-minute film, with those extra minutes offered separately as "lifted scenes." Unfortunately, the film is split across two discs and the extras are pretty thin; the "new" documentary is only 15 minutes and made up of old interviews. --Doug Thomas Description Kevin Costner plays the most famous lawman ever to stride the Wild West. In a gritty, complex portrayal hailed as a "classic American performance" (Bob Campbell, Newhouse Newspapers), Academy Award winner Costner (Dances with Wolves, The Bodyguard) plays the man who became a myth in acclaimed director Lawrence Kasdan's (The Big Chill, Silverado) epic, action-filled saga. Gene Hackman, an Oscar winner for Unforgiven, as Wyatt's iron-willed father, and Dennis Quaid (The Big Easy, The Right Stuff) as Earp's deadly best friend Doc Holliday add power to this mammoth, hard-hitting Western. From Wichita to Dodge City to the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, Wyatt Earp is a thrilling journey of romance, adventure and desperate, heroic action.

Young Guns
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Starring: Estevez, Emilio Sutherland, Kiefer Sheen, Charlie Mulroney, Dermot Palance, Jack Sutherland, Kiefer Diamond Phillips, Lou Stamp, Terence Stamp, Terence Thomas, Sharon
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Director: Cain, Christopher	Rating: R	Running Time: 102 min
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 6.4/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com Part of what was touted as a late-1980s revival of Westerns (and you can see how long that lasted), this good-looking, empty-brained film was like a spurs-and-chaps version of a Joel Schumacher movie, filled with pretty faces, prettier imagery, and absolutely no new ideas. The idiotically grinning Emilio Estevez is cast as Billy the Kid, who slowly accumulates a gang of Brat Pack buddies (Lou Diamond Phillips, Kiefer Sutherland, Dermot Mulroney) and fashions them into a group of male models with six-guns. The action is confused and the script is trite, though Terence Stamp is intriguing as the old reprobate who helps the gang get its act together. Followed by an even worse sequel. --Marshall Fine --This text refers to the VHS Tape edition.

Young Guns II
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Starring: Estevez, Emilio Sutherland, Kiefer Phillips, Lou Diamond Slater, Christian Sutherland, Kiefer Rippy, Leon Diamond Phillips, Lou Walter, Tracey Walter, Tracey Kehoe, Jack
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Director: Murphy, Geoff	Rating: PG-13	Running Time: 1 Hour 43 Minutes
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Category: Westerns	User Rating: 5.8/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com This time around, the Brat Packers (Emilio Estevez, Christian Slater, Lou Diamond Phillips, Kiefer Sutherland) are on the run from the law and making a break for the border. Sutherland is yanked from his school-teaching job back East and extradited for trial, until he's liberated by the other members of the gang. There's a memorable scrap between Phillips and Slater, and a couple of pretty decent firefights, but all in all this is rather forgettable fare. It taps into the futility and camaraderie of classics like The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but Sam Peckinpah or George Roy Hill it ain't. Jon Bon Jovi adds to the Rock-Stars-in-the-Old-West feel of this one, rife as it is with non-period dialogue and long, blowy hair. Still, fans of the original movie may find plenty to like in this sequel, even if it comes across as being a bit tired and turgid (notice there never was a Young Guns III). --Jerry Renshaw