By turns poignant, comic, melancholy, cruel, mythic and debunking, this anti-Western is one of Robert Altman's key films. Fancily-dressed dude McCabe (Warren Beatty) runs the gambling, drinking and prostitution house in a wilderness mining town with English madam Julie Christie, which would normally make him a villain but is here a bizarre variation on the American dream. McCabe takes a futile stand against gunmen hired by the company that wants to take over the territory, if only because he decides too late to sell out. Altman is at least as interested in peculiar side-touches like the bar room chatter about the style of moustache appropriate for a Westerner, or the unforgettable stand-off on a rope bridge between Keith Carradine and a trigger-happy kid.