10 Westerns You Need To Watch After Playing Red Dead Redemption 2

An unusually reserved effort from Kevin Costner, Open Range is much less of a vanity project than the likes of Dances With Wolves or Wyatt Earp. Granted, he plays a morally upstanding gunslinger who's better at shootin' and doin' what's right than anyone else is, but baby steps everyone. There's actually some nuance at play this time round.

What makes Open Range such a worthwhile watch is not necessarily its plot, as at heart it's a pretty cut-and-dry classic western with well-defined and sometimes simplistic views on morality. What makes it such a worthwhile watch is how it grounds that simplicity in palpable historical authenticity and a well realised world. The frontier town of Harmonville (a clear inspiration for RDRII's Valentine) is populated with lively, if slightly clichéd, characters.

When free-grazers Charlie Waite and Boss Spearman are attacked by a local land baron, leaving one of their companions gravely wounded and another dead, they take it upon themselves to endear themselves to the townsfolk, aiming to turn them against the corrupt local law enforcement and setting the stage for a deadly showdown of their own design. The build-up of tension is almost unbearable, with a sense of foreboding that borders on apocalyptic.

And then they start shooting at each other.

The shootout is almost unparalleled in every way. It's slow, deliberate, and at times awkward. It's such a departure from the usual montage-of-people-getting-shot fare that if nothing else, you need to watch Open Range purely to learn how a showdown is done.