  Clint Eastwood in "Unforgiven."
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#10: SHANE (1953): A gunfighter hoping to leave his violent ways behind him -- perhaps the genre's most common theme -- must defend a family.
#9: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966): Sergio Leone's sun-drenched spaghetti westerns -- which catapulted Eastwood to stardom -- amount to operatic clashes of right and wrong, bolstered by Ennio Morricone's masterful score.
#8: THE WILD BUNCH (1969): Director Sam Peckinpah's end-of-an-era saga about aging gunfighters battling extinction.
#7: THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960): Based on Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film Seven Samurai, a group of mercenaries are hired to protect a Mexican village.
#6: McCABE AND MRS. MILLER (1971): The 1970s marked the arrival of the "anti-western" -- a revisionist sub-genre that subverted cliches. Few were as successful as this film from Robert Altman starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.
#5: DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990): Cynics and cinephiles loathe it now -- particularly since it beat Goodfellas for the Best Picture Oscar -- but Kevin Costner's frontier epic is nonetheless sweeping, big-hearted filmmaking.
#4: BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1968): A buddy movie served immeasurably by the winning chemistry between Paul Newman and Robert Redford as the outlaws.
#3: HIGH NOON (1954): Gary Cooper personifies taciturn Old West heroism as a marshall who finds himself in a solitary showdown with vicious killers. Like the finest examples of the genre, it is as concerned with morality as mortality.
#2: THE SEARCHERS (1956): John Ford's classic about a Civil War veteran (John Wayne) searching for his niece, who was kidnapped by Comanches years earlier. Long hailed as one of the most influential films ever made.
#1: UNFORGIVEN (1992): Clint Eastwood's Oscar winner is, like The Assassination of Jesse James, a meditation on the myth-making inherent in Old West lore. As killer-turned-family man William Munny, Eastwood -- whose career was forged in fake blood -- finds a perfect vessel for his own cinematic redemption.
