10 Most Ambitious Westerns Movies Ever Made

Sergio Leone's Western Epic marks the culmination of the Spaghetti Western movement. Clocking in at over 3 hours and being something of a part Civil War, part Treasure Hunting, part Revenge tale, Leone's picture is a masterpiece which somehow manages to deftly balance all of these disparate plates.

Set during the Civil War, the story follows three outlaws - the eponymous Good (Clint Eastwood), Bad (Lee Van Cleef), and Ugly (Eli Wallach) - as they race to find a buried trove of gold hidden in a cemetery. Leone's picture, the third in the Dollars Trilogy, has it all, from Mexican standoffs to full scale civil war battle scenes, and of course there's Ennio Morricone's iconic score which has transcended the film, becoming a staple reference point in pop culture.

However, it is not just in terms of its scale and technical accomplishments that The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly ranks as one of the genre's most ambitious offerings. The Civil War is not mere set dressing here, poignantly coming into focus time and again throughout the narrative, providing an emotional foundation upon which the film builds its more outlandish set pieces. In terms of thematic breadth, this western is a hard one to best.