Recent Westerns: Deconstruction and Nostalgia in Contemporary Western Film

Shanghai Noon, Open Range, Cold Mountain, The Missing, The Proposition, Brokeback Mountain, Deadwood, Broken Trail, 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men. These recent films, all produced during the last ten years were either commercial or critical successes or both. Involving such big names as Jackie Chan, Nicole Kidman, Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Russel Crowe, and Brad Pitt, they are all in some way or the other connected to the oldest film genre of all: the Western. Does this prove that the Western is still not dead yet, that there is a life after Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves and Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven? In Recent Westerns, Robert Spindler provides a concise overview of the Western genre and its historical background. He introduces all of the major Westerns produced since the year 2000. Four of these, Open Range, The Missing, 3:10 to Yuma, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, are picked out for an in-depth analysis. Covering such aspects as the Western formula, violence, mythology, ethnicity, gender, Wild West heroes, outlaws, etc., this essential guide to the contemporary Western illustrates the genre’s present appearance in a comprehensive and compact form.