10 Greatest R-Rated Westerns of the 21st Century, Ranked

Western cinema has long been shaped by violence, justice, and morality as much as by sweeping visuals and cowboy characters. The mid-20th-century heyday wasn’t known for confronting realism, but in recent decades audiences have gravitated toward visceral authenticity that dismantles fabled American values.

The 21st-century Western has become synonymous with gruelling intensity and shocking violence. While lower-rated films like True Grit and First Cow show a different path, most modern Westerns have been R-rated, spanning spaghetti-Western callbacks, biographical dramas, revenge epics, and neo-Western spins on rusted-on tropes.

Bone Tomahawk stands out as one of the most viscerally violent entries: a confronting Western horror about a Bright Hope rescue mission and a cannibalistic cave-dwelling tribe, driven by a dread-inducing slow burn and harrowing practical execution.

United States

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