10 Recent Westerns That Prove The Genre Isn't Dead

2. Django Unchained (2012)

If anyone is going to give the Western a pop makeover then send it into cinemas looking as fresh as John Wayne did back in his Stagecoach days, it's Quentin Tarantino. Taking all his favourite Westerns - The Great Silence, Mandingo and Blazing Saddles are among the ridiculously mismatched reference points - then confining them to a blender, Tarantino poured audiences the resulting rick, thick glass of Western entertainment with Django Unchained. It's too long, it's morally confusing (a cartoonish Spaghetti Western set against the backdrop of slavery? Score!), but damn if Django Unchained isn't enormously satisfying, a classic revenge tale populated by cool antiheroes and eloquent Tarantino-esque villain types so flamboyant they may as well be dancing their way through the picture.