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Western ensemble movies often bring together a wide variety of stars, with everyone from award-winning actors to brilliant character actors, to tell stories set in the Old West. These stretch back to the classic Westerns with gunslingers teaming up to fight ruthless outlaws and more modern-time films, playing on the Wild West mythology.
The Western movies with the best ensemble casts include tales of famous outlaws fighting for their lives, to stories of traveling gunslingers who sometimes join forces to help people in hopeless situations. With major stars like Kurt Russell, Emilio Estevez, Yul Brynner, and Steve McQueen, these Westerns remain iconic.
Young Guns (1988)
Young Guns is a 1980s Western film that stars members of the Brat Pack as they tell the story of the outlaws who were part of the notorious Regulators, a group of young gunslingers deputized to fight in the Lincoln County War. However, many of the members ended up becoming outlaws.
The members of the Regulators in this movie are based on real-life outlaws and gunslingers, and this Western ensemble cast is a who’s who of the 80s young adult scene. Emilio Estevez stars as Billy the Kid, Kiefer Sutherland plays Doc Scurlock, and Lou Diamond Phillips is Jose Chavez y Chavez.
Add in names like Dermot Mulroney, and older actors like Terence Stamp, Jack Palance, and Terry O’Quinn, and this cast matches up well to any other of the era. While the movie is mainly seen as a guilty pleasure, there is a lot to like about the action-packed Western.
Bad Day At Black Rock (1955)
Bad Day at Black Rock is a neo-Western that doesn’t get nearly enough love. The movie is a crime drama that s a one-armed stranger who comes into a small desert town and discovers the community has become corrupted by a dark secret. The film earned three Oscar nominations, and it has been added to the National Film Registry.
The ensemble cast for this Western has some huge names. Two-time Oscar winner Spencer Tracy stars as the one-armed John Macreedy, who arrives in the small town of Black Rock. He went on to earn another Oscar nomination for this role.
Joining him in the cast are Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine, and Lee Marvin. Bad Day at Black Rock received almost universally positive reviews. The cast was a big part of that, as it featured three past and two future Academy Award winners.
True Grit (2010)
The first True Grit movie was the only time that John Wayne won an Oscar, while he was joined by Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, and Dennis Hopper. The remake in 2010 was just as impressive, with more Oscar nominees and famous actors involved. The Coen Brothers remade the movie and cast it impressively.
Jeff Bridges took on the John Wayne role as Rooster Cogburn, a U.S. Marshal whom a young girl hires to find the man who killed her father. Hailee Steinfeld impressed critics with her performance in an early role for the future MCU star (Kate Bishop). Matt Damon took on the Glen Campbell role as the Texas Ranger who joins them.
The rest of the cast included names like Josh Brolin as the villain, with Barry Pepper, Domhnall Gleeson, and J.K. Simmons. True Grit earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, a Best Actor nomination for Bridges, and a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Steinfeld.
How The West Was Won (1962)
How the West Was Won was an epic Western movie that had five chapters with three different directors involved. Henry Hathaway directed three of the segments, while John Ford and George Marshall directed each of the other two. With such a large story, the cast was impressively huge with a deep list of stars.
This Western ensemble cast included some of the biggest stars of the 1960s. Up front, 2-time Oscar winner Spencer Tracy was the narrator. The first segment was led by Jimmy Stewart, with Debbie Reynolds, Walter Brennan, and Karl Malden in the cast. The second had Gregory Peck in the lead.
Up next was a segment with George Peppard, Harry Morgan, and John Wayne in the cast. «The Railroad» had Henry Fonda as the lead. Finally, the last segment starred Lee J. Cobb, Eli Wallach, and Harry Dean Stanton. How the West Was Won was nominated for eight Oscars, winning three.
Silverado (1985)
In 1985, Silverado was a Western movie that remains an underrated Western from a decade when the genre was in decline. Directed by Lawrence Kasdan, the movie is about four unlikely heroes who team up to fight corruption in the frontier town of Silverado by fighting a ruthless sheriff and a brutal cattle baron.
This was one of Kevin Costner’s first Western roles before he became a genre icon, where he starred as one of the heroes, alongside Scott Glenn’s gunslinger, Kevin Kline’s drifter, and Danny Glover as a Black cowboy who wants to find justice. That was only the start of this impressive ensemble Western cast.
Rosanna Arquette stars as one of the love interests. John Cleese is the corrupt sheriff, Brian Dennehy is the saloon owner, Linda Hunt is the saloon manager, and Jeff Goldblum is a local gambler.
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Quentin Tarantino has always had a skill for putting together some excellent ensemble casts in his movies. While Tarantino has two Westerns to his name, the one with the most impressive ensemble is The Hateful Eight. This film s eight different people in the Old West trapped in a haberdashery during a snowstorm.
The cast saw Samuel L. Jackson and Walton Goggins returning from Tarantino’s last Western ensemble movie, Django Unchained. Tarantino regulars Tim Roth and Michael Madsen were also part of the cast. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, Demián Bichir, Bruce Dern. James Parks, and Channing Tatum add to the stacked cast.
The film was not as well-received by critics and fans as other Tarantino movies, but it still had some great stars and masterful performances in the realm of the Western genre.
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Sam Peckinpah was one of the best Western directors of his era, and this allowed him to bring in some top stars for his films. His masterpiece is the 1969 ensemble Western movie The Wild Bunch. The revisionist Western s an aging outlaw gang trying to adapt to the modern world in 1913.
The fact that this is about aging outlaws gave Peckinpah a good chance to pull in some old-school Western stars for his adventure. The cast included names like William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, and Edmond O’Brien.
The Wild Bunch remains considered one of the most violent Westerns of all time, and the cast helped carry the load of showing how this violence affects the outlaws involved. While the cast was incredible, it received two Oscar nominations, although neither was for acting.
The Harder They Fall (2021)
Released in 2021 as a Netflix exclusive, The Harder They Fall is a Western movie that focuses on Black outlaws and lawmen from the Old West. However, this is a fictional account of their adventures and accomplishments. This allowed a varied cast unlike any other ensemble Western film.
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The cast was led by Jonathan Majors, who played Nat Love, an American writer and cowboy in the days ing the Civil War. Joining him in the cast are names like Idris Elba, Zazie Beetz, Regina King, Delroy Lindo, Lakeith Stanfield, RJ Cyler, Damon Wayans Jr., and more.
The Harder They Fall won the Best Ensemble Award at the African-American Film Critics Association, the Black Reel Awards, the Gotham Awards, and the NAACP Image Awards.
Tombstone (1993)
One of the most beloved ensemble Westerns of the modern-day arrived in 1993 with Tombstone. The film retells the story of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the Earp brothers’ war with the Cowboys in Tombstone, Arizona. The film is often seen as a guilty pleasure, but it is an amazing Western.
While Val Kilmer steals every scene he appears in as Doc Holliday, he is only part of the ensemble cast. Kurt Russell is actually the lead in the movie as Wyatt Earp, as he and his brothers head into Tombstone to retire from their lives as lawmen. Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton star as his brothers, Virgil and Morgan.
The supporting cast is just as incredible, with names like Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Charlton Heston, Jason Priestley, Stephen Lang, Thomas Haden Church, Dana Delany, Billy Zane, Billy Bob Thornton, Harry Carey Jr., Terry O’Quinn, and Robert Mitchum. It doesn’t get much better than this ensemble cast.
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
When Western movie fans think of ensemble casts, one of the first movies that comes to mind is The Magnificent Seven. A remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, John Sturges directs this movie about seven gunslingers who a town hires to help protect them from an evil cattle baron who threatens their safety.
The Seven includes some great members, featuring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, and James Coburn. The supporting cast includes Eli Wallach. This Western ensemble cast remains the one that all others are judged against.
The movie was also remade in 2016, with another incredible cast that was headlined by Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, and Chris Pratt. However, the original remains the best of the best for ensemble Westerns.
