10 Best Clint Eastwood Westerns Ranked

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Few actors look as good atop a horse as Clint Eastwood. Like John Wayne before him, Eastwood is a Western icon, despite starring in a variety of genres including war epics, cop dramas, and even a handful of comedies. Yet when most casual audiences think of Eastwood, they tend to imagine him with a cowboy hat and a six-shooter. That's understandable, since he first came to fame as Rowdy Yates on the TV Western "Rawhide," which aired on CBS from 1959-1965. 

He soon achieved international stardom by traveling to Italy to star in Sergio Leone's "Man with No Name" trilogy — "A Fistful of Dollars," "For a Few Dollars More," and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" — which created a sub-genre known as spaghetti Westerns. He parlayed that success into leading man roles in Westerns back home, from the highs of "The Outlaw Josey Wales" to the lows of "Paint Your Wagon."

Eastwood left the spurs and saddles behind for good with "Unforgiven," a deconstruction of the genre that won him Oscars for best picture and best director. Although he continued to work steadily both in front of and behind the camera long after that 1992 masterwork, he never returned to the genre that made him famous (although there are certainly traces of it in later films like "The Mule" or "Cry Macho"). But the surprisingly few Westerns Eastwood did make remain classics. Here are the 10 best Clint Eastwood Westerns, ranked.

In "Joe Kidd," Clint Eastwood plays an ex-bounty hunter who's hired by a greedy land baron, Frank Harlan (Robert Duvall), to take down Luis Chama (John Saxon), a Mexican revolutionary fighting for the return of the land to its rightful people. At first, Joe wants to stay out of the conflict, as he's enjoy his retirement as a rancher. He's spurned into action, however, when Chama's gang attacks one of his ranch workers, revealing their leader to be an egomaniac more concerned with his own financial gain than the prosperity of the poor natives. Joe can't abide this, and he makes it known by polishing off his trusty old rifle.

Directed by steady genre hand John Sturges — best known for classics like "The Magnificent Seven" — from a script by novelist Elmore Leonard (who, in addition to his crime fiction, wrote the short stories that inspired "3:10 to Yuma" and "The Tall T"), "Joe Kidd" has all the hallmarks of a classic Hollywood shoot-em-up. Clocking in at just 88 minutes, it's brisk fun, but lacks some of the depth and introspection of Eastwood's best revisionist Westerns. "It's lesser Eastwood," wrote Brian Orndorf for Blu-ray.com, "which carries the film far enough to satisfy basic needs from the genre, making it a lark, but a convincing one."

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Robert Duvall, John Saxon

Director: John Sturges

Rating: PG

Runtime: 88 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

One of Clint Eastwood's most important creative partnerships was with director Don Siegel, with whom he made five films. While "Dirty Harry," "The Beguiled," and "Escape from Alcatraz" have all been canonized, their sole Western collaboration, "Two Mules for Sister Sara," remains lesser known (as does their first pairing, "Coogan's Bluff," a sort of dry run for "Dirty Harry"). Set during the Civil War, it stars Eastwood as Hogan, a former Union soldier who stops a gang from raping a young nun, Sister Sara (Shirley MacLaine). After seeking refuge in a nearby Mexican camp, Hogan agrees to help the revolutionaries in their war against the French. He's surprised to learn that Sister Sara is given to drinking, swearing, and gunslinging, which comes in handy during the big battle.

Working from an original story by Budd Boetticher (who directed a number of highly regarded low-budget Westerns starring Randolph Scott), the film succeeds thanks in large part to Eastwood and MacLaine's odd-couple chemistry and Siegel's lean action directing. "I'm not sure it is a great movie," mused Roger Greenspun in his New York Times review, "but it is very good and it stays and grows on the mind the way only movies of exceptional narrative intelligence do." Siegel's no-nonsense filmmaking approach undoubtedly rubbed off on Eastwood, who dedicated his Oscar-winning "Unforgiven" to him and Sergio Leone. 

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Shirley MacLaine, Manolo Fábregas

Director: Don Siegel

Rating: GP

Runtime: 116 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

After shooting to stardom with the spaghetti Westerns directed by Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood hopped in the saddle for his first American cowboy flick, "Hang 'Em High," which was also the first movie produced through his production banner, The Malpaso Company. He plays Jed Cooper, who is very nearly lynched after being wrongly accused of cattle rustling. After narrowly escaping the noose thanks to the goodwill of Judge Adam Fenton (Pat Hingle) and Marshal Dave Bliss (Ben Johnson), Jed is appointed as a federal marshal, provided he doesn't seek revenge against the gang that tried to kill him. He initially agrees, but when he finds out those same men have repeatedly broken the law themselves, he's granted an excuse to enact vengeance.

"Hang 'Em High" was directed by Ted Post, a journeyman TV veteran who later helmed the first "Dirty Harry" sequel, "Magnum Force." (He also directed Eastwood in several episodes of "Rawhide.") Even though Eastwood didn't personally direct it, the film touches on a theme that would become prevalent in his work: the innocent man railroaded by an unjust system. "More interesting as a way station in Eastwood's career than for anything intrinsic to its lawman/vigilante scenario," explained a 2012 review in Time Out, "the film anticipates the obsession with the dichotomy between natural and legal justice" that would define many of his best movies.

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Inger Stevens, Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Ben Johnson

Director: Ted Post

Rating: Approved

Runtime: 114 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

"High Plains Drifter" was the first Western Clint Eastwood ever directed, and only his second directorial effort overall after 1971's "Play Misty for Me." As he did in his spaghetti Westerns for Sergio Leone, Eastwood once again plays a man with no name, this time one who rides into the small town of Lago and wins over the townspeople thanks to his talent with firearms. The townspeople implore him to protect them against a gang of gunslingers, and The Stranger agrees, only to take control of the town and bend it to his will. Bit by bit, his true motivations are revealed, and the film takes some biblical twists and turns. 

Working from a screenplay by Oscar winner Ernest Tidyman, who wrote "The French Connection," Eastwood's sophomore feature is a tribute to his heroes, Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, combining Siegel's sturdy craftsmanship with Leone's visual flamboyance. The results are at times surreal, action-packed, and metaphorical. Vincent Canby of The New York Times summed it up as "part ghost story, part revenge Western, more than a little silly, and often quite entertaining in a way that may make you wonder if you have lost your good sense." And that's a good way of describing what is simultaneously one of the most atypical titles in Eastwood's filmography and one of his best efforts in the genre that made him a star. 

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Verna Bloom, Mariana Hill

Director: Clint Eastwood

Rating: R

Runtime: 105 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

The second chapter in Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone's "Man with No Name" trilogy, "For a Few Dollars More" expands upon the lore established in "A Fistful of Dollars" while hinting at the epic scope yet to come in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Eastwood is once again The Man with No Name (here ostensibly named Manco), and this time he's hunting down a murderous gang leader known as El Indio (Gian Maria Volenté). He's hindered in his mission by the presence of another bounty hunter, Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef). After a brief rivalry, they decide to join forces and track El Indio down together.

Because of its placement between the first and third films, "For a Few Dollars More" is often treated as the overlooked middle child, yet there's a great deal to appreciate about this installment, from Eastwood's hilariously stoic performance to Ennio Morricone's iconic score. "The stage is set here for Leone's coming masterpieces, which would transcribe this intense, unsettling energy onto a canvas large enough to fit all of its splenetic, bloodletting rage," wrote Jake Cole of Slant. It's true: The greatness of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" wouldn't be possible had Leone and Eastwood not used "For a Few Dollars More" as a sort of cinematic trial run for it.

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volenté

Director: Sergio Leone

Rating: R

Runtime: 132 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

Clint Eastwood made fewer and fewer Westerns throughout the 1970s, and only released one, "Pale Rider" during the 1980s. Eastwood both directs and stars as Preacher, a mysterious stranger who rides into a small mining town under constant threat by a corrupt land baron, Coy LaHood (Richard Dysart). Preacher helps fend off a gang of LaHood's thugs, and even tries to reason with the man so that the townspeople can go about their daily lives in peace. But when LaHood sends in a corrupt marshal (John Russell) to run the townsfolk off their land, Preacher is left with no choice but to let his rifle do the talking.

Like all of the Westerns Eastwood directed, "Pale Rider" is both indebted to the classics (in this case, a movie like "Shane" comes to mind) while also subverting the genre's tropes to examine the darker truths about the Old West. Much like "High Plains Drifter," "Pale Rider" is also heavily influenced by religious themes, with the Preacher acting as a representation of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation. In his four-star review for the Chicago Sun Times, Roger Ebert called the film "a considerable achievement, a classic Western of style and excitement." "Pale Rider" was an artistic step forward for Eastwood, hinting at the greatness still to come in "Unforgiven."

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgress, Richard Dysart, John Russell

Director: Clint Eastwood

Rating: R

Runtime: 115 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

Although Clint Eastwood achieved television fame with "Rawhide," it took a while for the movie industry to catch up. As such, he had to travel abroad for his first starring role, in Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars," and the rest, as they say, is history. Inspired by the Akira Kurosawa samurai classic "Yojimbo," it stars Eastwood as The Man with No Name (aka "Joe"), a lone gunslinger wandering throughout the desert. When he happens upon a small Mexican village, he suddenly finds himself caught up in a battle between two warring factions: the town sheriff, John Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy), and the Rojo brothers, Ramon (Gian Maria Volonté), Esteban (Sieghardt Rubb), and Don Benito (Antonio Prieto). Rather than choose a side, he plays them against each other for his own gain.

"A Fistful of Dollars" gave birth to the spaghetti Western, which took the genre to exhilarating, gonzo new heights. "'A Fistful of Dollars' has a cult, comic-book intensity," raved Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian. "It is the punk rock of Westerns." It's hard to imagine what the Western would have looked like without it, just as it's nearly impossible to separate Eastwood from the star persona he established here. With the exception of Dirty Harry, there's no more identifiable Eastwood character than The Man with No Name: silent, cynical, and ultimately, heroic.

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch, Josef Egger, Wolfgang Lukschy

Director: Clint Eastwood

Rating: R

Runtime: 99 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

Despite its troubled production history, "The Outlaw Josey Wales" turned out to be one of Clint Eastwood's most acclaimed films, both as a star and a director. He actually took on the later job after he fired original director Philip Kaufman with filming already underway. A melee ensued when the Directors Guild of America caught wind of the star's intention to take the reins himself, causing them to implement what became known as the Eastwood Rule, which prohibits an actor or producer from replacing a director with themselves. 

Despite the behind-the-scenes drama, "The Outlaw Josey Wales" is one of the best revisionist Westerns, examining America's troubled past and its unsure future after the Civil War. Eastwood plays Josey Wales, a Missouri farmer whose wife and child are brutally murdered by Union troops. Wales joins the Confederate Army, and refuses to lay down his weapons after the South surrenders. Instead, he flees to Texas, where he garners a reputation as a fearsome gunslinger and gains a sense of community with a new love, Laura Lee (played by Eastwood's then-girlfriend, Sondra Locke), and the aging Cherokee Lone Waite (Chief Dan George). 

In the words of The Chicago Reader's Dave Kehr, "['The Outlaw Josey Wales'] possesses a touching emotional vulnerability that marks another significant step away from Eastwood's often-overcriticized 'macho' image."

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney, John Vernon

Director: Clint Eastwood

Rating: PG

Runtime: 135 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

"The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" is the "Citizen Kane" of spaghetti Westerns, the defining film in a sub-genre that was born out of the imagination of Sergio Leone and the star power of Clint Eastwood. The concluding chapter of the duo's "Man with No Name" trilogy, it finds Eastwood's nameless drifter (here referred to as "Blondie") forming an alliance with a Mexican bandit, Tuco (Eli Wallach), to keep another man, Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef), from finding $20,000 in buried gold. Meanwhile, the Civil War is raging, and Blondie finds himself caught up in the conflict.

Restored to its original three-hour length in 2002, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" is a Western of epic proportions, featuring breathtaking landscapes, astounding battle sequences, and one of the most memorable scores ever composed by Ennio Morricone. It also features one of the best examples of Eastwood's unique ability to hold an audience's attention without saying a single word. Having worked with him twice already, Leone understood this intrinsically, and many of the movie's most famous shots are extreme closeups of Eastwood's eyes during the final three-way shootout. 

Michael Wilmington of The Chicago Tribune called it, "An improbable masterpiece — a bizarre mixture of grandly operatic visuals, grim brutality and sordid violence that keeps wrenching you from one extreme to the other."

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef

Director: Sergio Leone

Rating: R

Runtime: 178 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

When it was released in 1992, "Unforgiven" felt almost like a swan song for Clint Eastwood, even though he would become astoundingly prolific during his twilight years. Yet the film was a farewell of sorts, not to Eastwood's career, but to the genre — and by extension, the screen persona — that had made him famous. Eastwood plays Will Munny, a notorious killer who put his rifle away when he met his bride. Struggling to raise his kids after his wife's passing, he agrees to kill a pair of cowboys who have disfigured a prostitute. As he rides into the town of Big Whiskey to collect the reward, he encounters the sheriff, Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), a sociopath who hides his love of violence behind a badge.

Of all the revisionist Westerns Eastwood either starred in or directed, "Unforgiven" is the one that best explores the moral contradictions at the genre's core. It's a dark film, both literally and figuratively, centered on men who have devoted their lives to violence — one who understands he is breaking the law, the other who believes he's protecting it. "Unforgiven" won best picture and best director Oscars for Eastwood and best supporting actor for Hackman, and cemented Eastwood's status as both a screen icon and a world-renowned filmmaker. "A better modern Western has yet to be made," raved Kevin Maher in The Times (UK), and he's right.

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris

Director: Clint Eastwood

Rating: R

Runtime: 130 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video