Every western movie streaming on MGM+ in the US right now — 30 films ranked by rating, checked against MGM+’s live catalog.
Updated July 2026 · Availability refreshed from MGM+ US
Directed by Sergio Leone
✦ MovieMuse AI takeSergio Leone's operatic standoff perfected the western's visual grammar—three gunslingers frozen in ritualistic anticipation before explosive violence.
While the Civil War rages on between the Union and the Confederacy, three men – a quiet loner, a ruthless hitman, and a Mexican bandit – comb the American Southwest in search of a strongbox containing $200,000 in stolen gold.
Directed by Sergio Leone
✦ MovieMuse AI takeSergio Leone's static compositions and Ennio Morricone's score transform landscape into character—the ultimate operatic western.
As the railroad builders advance unstoppably through the Arizona desert on their way to the sea, Jill arrives in the small town of Flagstone with the intention of starting a new life.
Directed by Joel Coen
✦ MovieMuse AI takeChigurh's coin-flip morality replaces the gunslinger code, making this neo-western about the genre's obsolescence in modern lawlessness.
Llewelyn Moss stumbles upon dead bodies, $2 million and a hoard of heroin in a Texas desert, but methodical killer Anton Chigurh comes looking for it, with local sheriff Ed Tom Bell hot on his trail. The roles of prey and predator blur as the violent pursuit of money and justice collide.
Directed by Sergio Leone
✦ MovieMuse AI takeLeone establishes the bounty hunter archetype with Clint Eastwood's economy of movement—style over dialogue becomes the western's native language.
Two bounty hunters both pursue the brutal and sadistic bandit, El Indio, who has a large bounty on his head.
Directed by John Ford
✦ MovieMuse AI takeFord's masterpiece deconstructs the myth-making machinery of westerns through competing historical narratives.
Questions arise when Senator Stoddard attends the funeral of a local man named Tom Doniphon in a small Western town. Flashing back, we learn Doniphon saved Stoddard, then a lawyer, when he was roughed up by a crew of outlaws terrorizing the town, led by Liberty Valance. As the territory's safety hung in the balance, Doniphon and Stoddard, two of the only people standing up to him, proved to be very important, but different, foes to Valance.
Directed by Sergio Leone
✦ MovieMuse AI takeThe Man With No Name weaponizes the western's moral ambiguity, playing towns against themselves to expose civilization's thin veneer.
The Man With No Name enters the Mexican village of San Miguel in the midst of a power struggle among the three Rojo brothers and sheriff John Baxter. When a regiment of Mexican soldiers bearing gold intended to pay for new weapons is waylaid by the Rojo brothers, the stranger inserts himself into the middle of the long-simmering battle, selling false information to both sides for his own benefit.
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
✦ MovieMuse AI takeReal-time narrative tension and high-noon showdown establish the template for existential western confrontation.
Will Kane, the sheriff of a small town in New Mexico, learns a notorious outlaw he put in jail has been freed, and will be arriving on the noon train. Knowing the outlaw and his gang are coming to kill him, Kane is determined to stand his ground, so he attempts to gather a posse from among the local townspeople.
Directed by John Sturges
✦ MovieMuse AI takeThe professional gunslinger collective challenges the lone hero myth central to western mythology.
An oppressed Mexican peasant village hires seven gunfighters to help defend their homes.
Directed by George Stevens
✦ MovieMuse AI takeShane perfects the gunfighter-as-tragic-savior archetype with balletic violence and the child's witnessing as emotional core.
A weary gunfighter attempts to settle down with a homestead family, but a smouldering settler and rancher conflict forces him to act.
Directed by Delmer Daves
✦ MovieMuse AI takePsychological duel between captor and captive reframes the western as intimate moral battlefield.
Dan Evans, a small time farmer, is hired to escort Ben Wade, a dangerous outlaw, to Yuma. As Evans and Wade wait for the 3:10 train to Yuma, Wade's gang is racing to free him.
Directed by Don Siegel
✦ MovieMuse AI takeElegiac final stand redefines the gunslinger myth—not heroic, but a dying breed confronting obsolescence with quiet dignity.
Afflicted with a terminal illness John Bernard Books, the last of the legendary gunfighters, quietly returns to Carson City for medical attention from his old friend Dr. Hostetler. Aware that his days are numbered, the troubled man seeks solace and peace in a boarding house run by a widow and her son. However, it is not Books' fate to die in peace, as he becomes embroiled in one last valiant battle.
Directed by Sergio Leone
✦ MovieMuse AI takeSpaghetti western anarchism: revolution and banditry collapse into absurdist critique of western heroism.
At the beginning of the 1913 Mexican Revolution, greedy bandit Juan Miranda and idealist John H. Mallory, an Irish Republican Army explosives expert on the lam from the British, fall in with a band of revolutionaries plotting to strike a national bank. When it turns out that the government has been using the bank as a hiding place for illegally detained political prisoners -- who are freed by the blast -- Miranda becomes a revolutionary hero against his will.
Directed by Arthur Penn
✦ MovieMuse AI takeDeconstructs frontier mythology through unreliable narration, interrogating the western's glorification of Indian conquest and Manifest Destiny.
Jack Crabb, looking back from extreme old age, tells of his life being raised by Indians and fighting with General Custer.
Directed by Howard Hawks
✦ MovieMuse AI takeThree-way alliance of aging gunfighters explores masculine obsolescence in the dying Old West era.
Cole Thornton, a gunfighter for hire, joins forces with an old friend, Sheriff J.P. Harrah. Together with a fighter and a gambler, they help a rancher and his family fight a rival rancher that is trying to steal their water.
Directed by Kevin Costner
✦ MovieMuse AI takeEastwood's final gunslinger film interrogates the code itself: honor becomes obsolete against systemic corruption.
A former gunslinger is forced to take up arms again when he and his cattle crew are threatened by a corrupt lawman.
Directed by Henry Hathaway
✦ MovieMuse AI takeFemale protagonist wielding moral authority over grizzled lawman subverts the genre's patriarchal power dynamics without abandoning its code.
The murder of her father sends a teenage tomboy on a mission of 'justice', which involves avenging her father's death. She recruits a tough old marshal, 'Rooster' Cogburn because he has 'true grit', and a reputation of getting the job done.
Directed by Burt Kennedy
✦ MovieMuse AI takeMeta-western satire that weaponizes con artistry against genre conventions about law and order.
In the old west, a man becomes a Sheriff just for the pay, figuring he can decamp if things get tough.
Directed by John Sturges
✦ MovieMuse AI takeHistorical gunfight mythologizes the outlaw-lawman brotherhood as western's most compelling relationship.
Lawman Wyatt Earp and outlaw Doc Holliday form an unlikely alliance which culminates in their participation in the legendary Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Directed by John Ford
✦ MovieMuse AI takeCivil War cavalry narrative expands western beyond frontier, testing codes in civilized warfare.
A Union Cavalry outfit is sent behind confederate lines in strength to destroy a rail supply center. Along with them is sent a doctor who causes instant antipathy between him and the commander. The secret plan for the mission is overheard by a southern belle who must be taken along to assure her silence.
Directed by George Sherman
✦ MovieMuse AI takeAging patriarch defies mortality through violence; western refuses to retire its archetypes.
An aging Texas cattle man who has outlived his time swings into action when outlaws kidnap his grandson.
Directed by Ted Post
✦ MovieMuse AI takeLynching's near-death transforms the protagonist into avenging lawman, weaponizing frontier justice against the mob that perverts it.
Marshall Jed Cooper survives a hanging, vowing revenge on the lynch mob that left him dangling. To carry out his oath for vengeance, he returns to his former job as a lawman. Before long, he's caught up with the nine men on his hit list and starts dispensing his own brand of Wild West justice.
Directed by Richard Fleischer
✦ MovieMuse AI takeNot a western—this Viking epic belongs in a different genre entirely.
Einar, brutal son of the viking Ragnar and future heir to his throne, tangles with clever slave Eric, for the hand of a beautiful English maiden.
Directed by Robert Aldrich
✦ MovieMuse AI takePost-Civil War mercenary capitalism replaces noble expansion, exposing the financial machinery beneath western ideology.
After the American Civil War, mercenaries travel to Mexico to fight in their revolution for money. The former soldier and gentleman Benjamin Trane meets the gunman and killer Joe Erin and his men, and together they are hired by the Emperor Maximillian and the Marquis Henri de Labordere to escort the Countess Marie Duvarre to the harbor of Vera Cruz.
Directed by John Farrow
✦ MovieMuse AI takeFrontier domesticity becomes the battleground; Hondo's protection of family against Apache siege embodies the settler-vs.-wilderness core conflict.
Army despatch rider Hondo Lane discovers a woman and her son living in the midst of warring Apaches, and he becomes their protector.
Directed by Giulio Petroni
✦ MovieMuse AI takeComing-of-age revenge structure subverts the gunfighter code through patient, methodical character study.
Bill Meceita, a boy whose family was murdered in front of him by a gang, sets out 15 years later to exact revenge. On his journey, he finds himself continually sparring and occasionally cooperating with Ryan, a gunfighter on his own quest for vengeance, who knows more than he says about Bill's tragedy.
Directed by Michael Winner
✦ MovieMuse AI takeProcedural gunslinger narrative substitutes bureaucratic law for mythic heroism, grounding the western in institutional consequence.
While passing through the town of Bannock, a bunch of drunken cattlemen go overboard with their celebrating and accidentally kill an old man with a stray shot. They return home to Sabbath unaware of his death. Bannock lawman Jered Maddox later arrives there to arrest everyone involved on a charge of murder. Sabbath is run by land baron Vince Bronson, a benevolent despot, who, upon hearing of the death, offers restitution for the incident.
Directed by Fred Niblo
✦ MovieMuse AI takeProto-superhero mask narrative and class transgression establish Zorro as western's philosophical foundation.
Don Diego Vega pretends to be an indolent fop as a cover for his true identity, the masked avenger Zorro. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
Directed by Walter Hill
✦ MovieMuse AI takeCasting real-life brothers as the James gang collapses fiction and history into authenticity.
The origins, exploits and the ultimate fate of the James gang is told in a sympathetic portrayal of the bank robbers made up of brothers who begin their legendary bank raids because of revenge.
Directed by Elliot Silverstein
✦ MovieMuse AI takeRitualistic adoption and cultural transformation interrogate manifest destiny from indigenous perspective.
In 1825, English peer Lord John Morgan is cast adrift in the American West. Captured by Sioux Indians, Morgan is at first targeted for quick extinction, but the tribesmen sense that he is worthy of survival. He eventually passes the many necessary tests that will permit him to become a member of the tribe.
Directed by James Edward Grant
✦ MovieMuse AI takeQuaker pacifism tests the gunslinger archetype, questioning whether violence can ever redeem a violent man.
Notorious shootist and womanizer Quirt Evans' horse collapses as he passes a Quaker family's home. Quirt has been wounded, and the kindly family takes him in to nurse him back to health against the advice of others. The handsome Evans quickly attracts the affections of their beautiful daughter, Penelope. He develops an affection for the family and their faith, but his troubled past follows him.
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