Bone Tomahawk

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• Top 6 Neo-Western Films of All Time

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• Hell or High Water

  "Hell or High Water" (2016) follows two brothers robbing branches of the same bank chain across rural West Texas to save their family ranch from foreclosure, pursued by a Texas Ranger nearing retirement, transplanting classic western genre conventions into a specifically contemporary economic setting. Its portrayal of small-town West Texas communities devastated by the 2008 financial crisis and predatory bank lending practices gave the film a pointed social commentary dimension, using the traditional western's outlaw-versus-lawman structure to comment directly on modern economic inequality. Jeff Bridges's performance as the aging Texas Ranger, alongside Chris Pine and Ben Foster as the brother bank robbers, earned widespread critical acclaim and multiple Academy Award nominations, including for Bridges's supporting performance and the film's original screenplay. Its combination of its pointed contemporary economic commentary and its classic western genre structure has made "Hell or High Water" one of the most critically acclaimed neo-western films of the 2010s.

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• Wind River

  "Wind River" (2017), written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, follows a wildlife tracker and a young FBI agent investigating a murder on a Wyoming Native American reservation, addressing the real and severely underreported crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States. Its wintry, remote Wyoming reservation setting gave the film a genuinely different visual and tonal register than most contemporary crime dramas, using the isolation and harsh conditions of the landscape as a direct extension of the story's themes of institutional neglect and isolation. The film closed with on-screen statistics specifically highlighting the lack of data tracking missing Indigenous women in the United States, giving "Wind River" a direct advocacy dimension uncommon in mainstream genre filmmaking, using its neo-western crime structure to draw attention to a genuine, ongoing societal failure. Its combination of its stark Wyoming reservation setting and its pointed real-world advocacy around missing Indigenous women has made "Wind River" one of the most socially significant neo-western films of the 2010s.

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• Hostiles

  "Hostiles" (2017), starring Christian Bale, follows a U.S. Army captain ordered to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief and his family back to their tribal lands in the late 19th century, structured as a journey narrative that directly confronts America's violent frontier history rather than romanticizing it. Its unflinching depiction of frontier-era violence against both Native Americans and white settlers avoided the more simplistically heroic framing common to earlier Hollywood westerns, presenting a morally complex reckoning with the historical brutality underlying America's westward expansion. The film's slow-burning, character-driven approach, focused on the gradual, reluctant mutual respect developing between Bale's initially hardened captain and the Cheyenne family he's escorting, reflected the broader neo-western genre's tendency toward more psychologically complex character studies than classic-era western filmmaking typically attempted. Its combination of its unflinching historical reckoning and its psychologically complex central relationship has made "Hostiles" one of the more critically serious and morally ambitious neo-western films of its era.

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• Logan

  "Logan" (2017), starring Hugh Jackman in his final performance as Wolverine, transplanted the western genre's structure directly onto a superhero film, following an aging, physically deteriorating Wolverine protecting a young mutant across a near-future American Southwest, with direct thematic and visual references to the classic western "Shane." Its deliberate incorporation of "Shane" itself, playing on a television within the film and mirrored directly in "Logan's" own plot and imagery, made the neo-western influence explicit rather than merely stylistic, positioning the film as a genuine genre hybrid rather than simply a superhero film borrowing western aesthetics. The film's harder-edged, R-rated approach, emphasizing genuine physical vulnerability and mortality for its previously near-invincible title character, gave "Logan" a tonal seriousness closer to prestige neo-western drama than typical franchise superhero filmmaking. Its combination of its explicit "Shane" homage and its genre-elevating dramatic seriousness has made "Logan" one of the most critically significant and unusual neo-western hybrids ever produced within a major franchise.

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• The Rider

  "The Rider" (2017), directed by Chloé Zhao, follows a young Lakota rodeo rider and horse trainer forced to reckon with his identity after a near-fatal head injury ends his competitive riding career, filmed on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation using non-professional actors playing versions of themselves. Its docufiction approach, casting real rodeo rider Brady Jandreau as a fictionalized version of his own actual life story following his real career-ending injury, gave the film an unusually direct, lived-in authenticity relative to more conventionally scripted and cast neo-western dramas. The film's quiet, contemplative visual style, capturing the Great Plains landscape and horse-training sequences with a naturalistic intimacy, established the same directorial sensibility Zhao would later bring to her Academy Award-winning "Nomadland" a few years afterward. Its combination of its genuinely lived-in docufiction authenticity and Zhao's naturalistic directorial style has made "The Rider" one of the most critically acclaimed and quietly powerful neo-western films of the 2010s.

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More in Film & TV

• Hidden Figures

  "Hidden Figures" (2016), directed by Theodore Melfi, dramatizes the true story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three Black women mathematicians whose calculations at NASA were critical to the success of the early American space program, based on Margot Lee Shetterly's nonfiction book of the same name. The film brought significant mainstream public attention to the real contributions of Black women "computers" at NASA during the Space Race, a history that had received relatively little prior widespread recognition, and it prompted renewed public interest in and honors for the real Katherine Johnson, who was still alive at the time of the film's release. Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe's central performances drew significant critical acclaim, and the film became a notable box office success, outperforming many contemporary awards-season dramas and demonstrating a substantial mainstream audience for historical stories centered on Black women. Hidden Figures's combination of its overdue mainstream spotlight on real, previously under-recognized NASA scientists and its strong central performances has made it one of the most culturally significant true-story films of its decade.

• 12 Years a Slave

  "12 Years a Slave" (2013), directed by Steve McQueen, dramatizes the true story of Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the antebellum South, based on Northup's own 1853 memoir of the same name. Chiwetel Ejiofor's lead performance and Lupita Nyong'o's supporting performance, in her film debut, both drew significant critical acclaim, with Nyong'o winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the film itself won the Academy Award for Best Picture. McQueen's unflinching, sustained visual approach to depicting the brutality of slavery, including several extended, unbroken takes of violence that the camera refuses to look away from, was widely credited with giving American slavery a more direct and confrontational cinematic treatment than most previous major studio films had attempted. 12 Years a Slave's combination of its direct grounding in Solomon Northup's own historical memoir and Steve McQueen's unflinching directorial approach has made it one of the most acclaimed and historically significant true-story films ever produced.

• Catch Me If You Can

  "Catch Me If You Can" (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, dramatizes the real early life of Frank Abagnale Jr., who successfully impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer while forging millions of dollars in checks before being caught by an FBI agent, played by Tom Hanks. The film was based on Abagnale's own memoir, and the real Abagnale, who later became a longtime security consultant working with the FBI, served as a consultant on the production, giving the filmmakers direct access to the actual details and methods behind his real-life cons. The film's stylish, buoyant tone and 1960s period production design, paired with John Williams's jazz-inflected score, gave the true story a lighter, more playful cinematic register than many other crime-based true stories, emphasizing the audacious cleverness of Abagnale's real schemes over their consequences. Catch Me If You Can's combination of its direct access to the real Frank Abagnale's own account and its stylish period filmmaking has made it one of the most purely entertaining true-story films ever produced.

• Erin Brockovich

  "Erin Brockovich" (2000), directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Julia Roberts, dramatizes the true story of the real Erin Brockovich, an unemployed single mother who, working as a legal clerk, helped build a massive lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric over water contamination in Hinkley, California. Roberts's performance won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, and her portrayal of the real Brockovich's brash, persistent determination in the face of both corporate stonewalling and professional condescension became one of the most acclaimed performances of her career. The real underlying case resulted in a $333 million settlement, at the time the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history, and the real Erin Brockovich served as a consultant on the film and appeared in a small cameo role. Erin Brockovich's combination of Julia Roberts's Oscar-winning lead performance and its grounding in one of the largest environmental settlements in American legal history has made it one of the most acclaimed true-story legal dramas ever produced.

• The Social Network

  "The Social Network" (2010), directed by David Fincher from Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, dramatizes the founding of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University and the subsequent legal disputes with his co-founders and the Winklevoss twins over credit and ownership of the company. Sorkin's screenplay, built around competing depositions and conflicting accounts of the same events, embraced the genuine ambiguity of the real underlying legal disputes rather than presenting a single definitive version of what happened, a structural choice widely praised by critics as an unusually sophisticated approach to dramatizing contested recent history. Jesse Eisenberg's performance as a fictionalized version of Zuckerberg drew significant critical acclaim, and the film's release while the real Facebook was still a relatively young and rapidly growing company gave it an unusually immediate, real-time quality rare for a historical biopic. The Social Network's combination of its sophisticated multi-perspective legal-dispute structure and its unusually immediate proximity to still-unfolding real events has made it one of the most critically acclaimed true-story films of the 21st century.