Westerns set in Modern Times or Fantasy Setup. Westerns that are not set in old west.

a 1974 American cult action film directed by Sam Peckinpah and featuring Warren Oates.

Made in Mexico on a low budget after the commercial failure of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Peckinpah claimed that, of all his films, Alfredo García was the only one released as he had intended. The film was a box-office and critical failure at the time, but has gained a new following and stature in the decades since.

John Carpenter is America's greatest living director of westerns. Although "Vampires" is his first literal western, JC's been turning out 1st rate original westerns from "Assault on Precinct 13" to "They Live" and "Escape From New York" to "The Thing". Even though these movies don't take place in the west, they have all the ingredients of a good western: the lone hero/outlaw, the seige or attack, the showdown, and plenty of action. "Vampires" takes place and was filmed in the southwest (filmed in Sante Fe, NM). Carpenter's DP Gary Kibbe captures some nice wide John Ford-ish western vistas, and Carpenter's minimalist score capture the desolate, hard nature of the place. The real asset of this film is its cast, especially James Woods as the insanely tough and foul-mouthed slayer Jack Crow.

About 40 years after portraying one of the most notorious western villains ever in Shane, Jack Palance showed up as an old, grizzled rancher in the 1991 sleeper hit City Slickers. He even won an Academy Award for his performance of Curly. This movie is all about a bunch of middle-age men in the ‘90s coming to terms with their own mortality by experiencing the free and expansive Wild West. There’s a lot to love about this movie, but Palance’s presence is what makes it particularly memorable as a western.

Again with the old guys returning to their western roots. Nearly 30 years after portraying the Sundance Kid in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Robert Redford gives a soft-spoken performance as an old rancher in this sweet western-type film set in the present day. I love the first two-thirds of The Horse Whisperer. Watching an extremely young Scarlet Johansson and her horse overcome serious trauma is surprisingly engaging and entertaining. The story derails a bit in the end, but the first part is amazing.

Long before Matthew McConaughey became a respected, Oscar-winning actor, he gave an extremely complex and layered performance in this intriguing film. We follow a modern-day Texas sheriff as he attempts to uncover a murder mystery that spans decades reaching back to his father (played by McConaughey) when he was a young man. The answers he finds are shocking and they completely redefine all of the relationships of the people in town. It turns out that some mysteries are best left buried.

This is one of my favorite films from writer/director Peter Hyams. Outland follows a pattern similar to High Noon, trading an Old West town for a mining colony on Jupiter’s moon Io. Sean Connery plays a Gary Cooper-type character who is in charge of security at the colony. When he uncovers a nasty secret about the colony’s corrupt business practices, he is forced into a shootout in which he is outnumbered and outgunned. He has to use his brains and an unlikely ally to fight them off and save the day.

This is a fairly traditional western, taking place in the late 1800s. The twist is that it isn’t in America but Australia, and the Native Americans are replaced by Australian aborigines. I love this movie. Its highlights include the catchy theme song, Tom Selleck’s effortlessly charming performance, Alan Rickman’s tragic villain, and, of course, Quigley’s awesome rifle. I wish this movie would have been more successful at the box office because I would’ve loved to see more adventures with Matthew Quigley on other continents.

This movie has a classic setup just like Shane and The Magnificent Seven. A group of peaceful people are under fire by some local outlaws, and they ask a tough guy for help in dealing with their problem. In The Road Warrior, some people have access to huge quantities of petrol in the post-apocalyptic Australian Outback where gasoline is one of the scarcest and most valued commodities out there. They’re threatened by a brutal gang, and their only hope is a cop-turned-nomad by the name of Max Rockatansky. Instead of a shootout, the film ends with a climactic car chase, but it still clearly follows the western tradition.

Three Amigos has everything you could want in a comedy: Three fantastic comedians at the top of their game (Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short) and a plethora of jokes, musical numbers, and over-the-top villains. It takes place during the Silent Film era and it is mainly set in a fictional village in Mexico.

I know I keep bringing up Shane, but this movie definitely feels like a parody of that classic western. The people of Santa Poco hire three men who they assume are hardened gunmen to defend them against the evil El Guapo and his gang of outlaws. But they get stuck with three actors who run at the first sign of trouble. In the end, the amigos improvise and find a creative solution to their problem so everyone can live happily ever after.

Westworld is kind of like The Terminator meets Jurassic Park. That’s probably not a coincidence because it was written and directed by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton. It’s about some vacationers in a futuristic theme park full of androids. One of the main attractions is a western setting in which patrons can challenge an android gunslinger to a duel and always win. But when something goes wrong and the power goes out (sound familiar?) the gunslinger goes on a rampage killing one patron and hunting another one through the park. It’s kind of a horror movie, but its setting and villain scream western.

Scorsese said that “Taxi Driver” was inspired by “The Searchers” shot by John Ford.

John Hillcoat ("The Road") takes the Western to the Australian Outback in this brutally-tense account of loyalty, revenge and the quest for justice. In "The Proposition," a lawman (played by Ray Winstone) apprehends the notorious outlaw Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce), and gives him nine days to make a fatal decision: Burns can either kill his older brother, or they’ll execute his younger brother. A sweeping moral parable, the film drew attention for its visual and narrative homages to the classic films of Sergio Leone, as well as its uncompromising effectiveness as a bleak mood piece. "The Proposition" broke out of the Australian cinema scene and garnered international recognition, with stateside film critics paying particular attention to the superb performances of Winstone, Danny Huston and Emily Watson.

"The Rover," Australian filmmaker David Michôd’s follow-up to his acclaimed family crime saga "Animal Kingdom," maintains the director’s firm tonal command even as it reaches into more richly ambiguous territory. In this sweaty, sun-caked piece of Aussie Western-noir, a hardened loner (Guy Pierce) pursues the men who stole his only possession, his car, capturing along the way one of the thieves’ brother (Robert Pattinson). The duo form an uneasy bond as they press on through the dangerous journey. "The Rover," chiefly concerned with the economic devastation that’s come to be characteristic of the 21st Century, cleverly filters contemporary existential dread into a dirty, bleak and morally-minded Western template. Like many movies on this list, "The Rover" is more expressionistic than action-packed, but it still manages a distinctiveness through its confidence in silence and specificity in location.

Despite being the first film from Thailand to be selected for competition at Cannes, in 2001, Wisit Sasanatieng’s larger-than-life western was a flop at the local box office. Further ignominies followed when its American distributor, Miramax Films, first tampered with and then shelved the film until Magnolia Pictures purchased it in 2006. Tears of the Black Tiger’s failure at home and subsequent mishandling overseas do Sasanatieng’s often inspired film a disservice, as its blend of traditional narrative, candy-coloured visual palette and Peckinpah-esque shootouts make it a thoroughly entertaining watch.

A tale of outlaw gunslingers, love across class divides, loyalty, betrayal and tragedy, Sasanatieng’s debut feature is part playful parody and part joyful homage both to the western genre and to Thailand’s homegrown action movies. Told partly in flashback, and with a soundtrack that alternates between Morricone-like strings and Thai pop ballads, this is literally as colourful a western as you’re ever likely to see.

A couple of years after starring in The Missing, Tommy Lee Jones returned to the western genre, this time as both lead actor and first-time director. Three Burials is an intelligent, profound neo-western morality tale, loosely inspired by a real life killing on the American-Mexican border and by William Faulkner’s 1930 novel As I Lay Dying.

A film about borders – geographical, class and wealth-based – Three Burials sees Jones’ Texan rancher Pete Perkins take the law into his own hands after the killing of his friend by local border patrolman Mike Norton. In order to fulfil the immigrant’s wishes of being buried in his Mexican homeland, Perkins, his captive Norton and the corpse of Estrada set off on horseback on what becomes a gruelling, existential and at times surreal odyssey. The film deservedly won Jones the best actor award and writer Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) the best screenplay award at the 2005 Cannes film festival.

The neo-western – a sub-genre that adheres to thematic traditions but takes place in contemporary settings — has proved particularly fruitful territory for a number of filmmakers. John Sturges’ Bad Day at Black Rock (1954), Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) and John Sayles’ Lone Star (1996) are all impressive examples of the neo-western, and the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men (2007) is the finest recent addition to the category.

Lean and muscular, the Coens’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel of the same name garnered four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The elegantly sparse plot revolves around the theft of millions of dollars worth of money from the aftermath of a drug deal gone catastrophically belly-up near the American-Mexican border in Texas. While Tommy Lee Jones’ philosophical Sheriff Ed Bell and Josh Brolin’s bold chancer Llewelyn Moss are engaging characters, Javier Bardem’s enigmatic, bizarre hit man Anton Chigurh achieved instant icon status.

More classic western elements: evil landowner, revenge, latent homosexuality. OK, just one of those. Ang Lee’s wonderful film about a couple of sheep-herding good ol’ boys who fancy each other must’ve had a few rednecks weeping into their checked shirts. And not in a good way.

Another Oscar-winner. Who cares if it’s a cartoon? And let’s be honest here; voicing the eponymous Wild West chameleon sheriff is probably Johnny Depp’s greatest performance in a decade.

A low-budget box-office hit set in a Mexican border town, the first of Robert Rodriguez’s Mariachi trilogy features Carlos Gallardo as the put-upon musician and victim of mistaken identity, who would later transform into a) a vengeful killer, and b) Antonio Banderas in the subsequent Desperado and Once Upon A Time In Mexico.

Robert Rodriguez deserves a second mention for making the finest B-movie western of modern times. Danny Trejo as a machete-wielding former Federale hitman is one thing, but adding the enigmatic talents of Steven Seagal, Don Johnson and Lindsay Lohan is cojones-out genius. And Bob De Niro pops up, too.

Time Travel in a Westerner

The film received positive reviews overall, with critics praising its original take on the Bonnie and Clyde archetype, and commending its style and western iconography influences. It garnered numerous critical awards and nominations and was listed in the top ten films of 2013 by many domestic and international film publications, but ultimately under-performed at the box office.

Bad Day at Black Rock is a 1955 Eastman Color in CinemaScope thriller directed by John Sturges and starring Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan that combines elements of the western with that of film noir. The supporting cast includes Anne Francis, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine.

The film tells the story of a mysterious stranger who arrives at a tiny isolated town in a desert of the southwest United States in search of a man. The film was adapted by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman from the short story "Bad Time at Honda" by Howard Breslin.[3][4][5][6] The original story had appeared in The American Magazine in January 1947, with full-color illustrations by Robert Fawcett.[7][8]