10 Greatest Westerns Of The 21st Century

8. Brokeback Mountain

No Country For Old Men
Focus Features

If there’s one common thread shared between modern day Westerns, and not their 50-70 year old counterparts, it is their portrayals of the West’s men, particularly their more sensitive sides. If Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name was an emotionless, cold-hearted dead-shot, then most 21st Century frontiersman are far more nuanced and three-dimensional.

Case in point: Brokeback Mountain, a touching tale of forbidden love between two men in the Wild West. Rarely does the genre attempt to tackle romance in any meaningful way (unless you class picking up hookers in the local brothel as ‘romantic’ or ‘meaningful’), nor does it have the best track record when it comes to portraying gay characters.

This is because – and read this on every level – men in Westerns have generally been characterised as ‘straight shooters’, people who act and think directly, and are otherwise unencumbered by complicated sexual desires or emotional ‘afflictions’.

That’s what makes Brokeback Mountain such a unique and compelling story; it completely turns the cowboy mythos upside down, exposing it as something of a fallacy, particularly when it comes into contact with anything that remotely resembles a ‘feeling’.

Contributor
Contributor

Liam is a writer and cranberry juice drinker from Lincolnshire. When he's not wearing his eyes away in front of a computer, he plays the melodica for a semi wrestling-themed folk-punk band called School Trips.