‘Dark Winds,’ ‘Justified,’ ‘The Hateful Eight’ & 5 More Modern Westerns to Watch Right Now
Westerns have helped reshape the way we see the complicated heroes of the plains, and there are several celebrated modern titles that continue to showcase this.
From TV shows like Dark Winds and Justified to films such as No Country for Old Men and The Hateful Eight, among others, there’s no shortage of cowboy flicks and series to check out. Scroll down for a closer examination of eight titles you need to watch now.
— Reporting by Ian Spelling
TV Guide Magazine’s Cowboys: From the Wild West to the New West Special Issue is available for order online now at Cowboys.TVGM2026.com, and for purchase on newsstands nationwide.
Hell or High Water (Movie)
The Tale: Two brothers knock over small-town banks across West Texas, not for thrills but for survival. Toby Howard (Chris Pine) wants to save the family ranch from foreclosure; Tanner, his volatile older brother (Ben Foster, above right, with Pine), mostly wants to watch the world burn. On their trail is sharp but aging Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), who painfully understands that his badge is nearing its expiration date; and Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham), Hamilton’s partner. What unfolds isn’t a flashy cops-and-robbers saga so much as a slow collision between people who feel cornered by age, economics, geography and blood ties. Every stop along the way reinforces the same bleak truth: Towns are dying, banks are winning and ain’t nobody riding to save the day.
Cowboy Cred: Look at this as The Wild Bunch with a foreclosure notice as the excuse for violence. It’s directed by a Scotsman (David Mackenzie), written by Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan and intended as a work of the modern American frontier. You’ve got outlaw brothers, a weary lawman, contested land, and an ending that feels less like justice and more like fate — that’s pure Western DNA. Replace horses with pickup trucks and revolvers with AR-15s, and the bones are classic genre storytelling. Like the best Westerns, this Best Picture Oscar nominee from 2016 asks who the real thieves are when the land and rules keep changing. Streaming now, Peacock
Justified (TV Show)
The Tale: Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant, left) is a U.S. marshal with a sharp tongue, a quicker draw and a knack for ticking off pretty much everyone, including lovers, enemies, friends and his bosses. Reassigned to the Kentucky hometown he long ago left behind, Givens finds himself entangled with criminals that he grew up with — most notably Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), an eloquent outlaw whose life keeps orbiting Givens’. Their relationship becomes Justified‘s emotional spine, turning each of its six seasons (2010–15) and a subsequent sequel miniseries into a long, deeply personal showdown. A joke is made early on that Raylan insists on wearing a Stetson even in settings he doesn’t need to. But its presence grounds him in the genre.
Cowboy Cred: Based on the Raylan Givens novels by Elmore Leonard (who served as an executive producer), Justified thrives on classic Western rhythms: tense standoffs, flexible codes of honor and bitter territory disputes, staged in bars rather than saloons. Givens is basically Wyatt Earp with better suits, Boyd is the charismatic outlaw in the Lee Van Cleef mold, and their conversations sound like verbal gunplay. Raylan and Boyd prove once again that Westerns live and die on the pairings of great adversaries—and the chemistry between the actors who play them. Streaming now, Hulu
No Country for Old Men (Movie)
The Tale: Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds a briefcase full of money at the West Texas desert site of a drug deal gone catastrophically wrong and makes one bad decision after another trying to keep it. Chasing him is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, below), a walking embodiment of creepiness and chaos armed with a cattle gun, a hideous haircut, a fascinating sociopathic philosophy, and a coin ready to flip for one’s fate. Watching it all unfold is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who increasingly suspects the world no longer makes room for men like him. And he’s right; dead right. The story refuses neat conclusions, leaving violence unresolved and unpunished, and meaning frustratingly out of reach.
Cowboy Cred: This 2007 classic is a Western from the Coen Brothers (who also brilliantly remade True Grit three years later), with remarkable, moody cinematography courtesy of Roger Deakins. Sheriff Bell is the spiritual descendant of Gary Cooper‘s High Noon lawman — except no one’s coming to help. Like The Searchers and High Noon, this movie wrestles with questions of morality, but in this setting, morality no longer exists. These are complicated genre characters roaming through one of the four Western films to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Streaming now, Paramount+ & Tubi
Dark Winds (TV Show)
The Tale: In the 1970s Southwest, Navajo Tribal Police officers Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon, above), Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) and Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) investigate crimes tied to political corruption, spiritual belief and cultural memory. The cases are compelling, but the far more intriguing story is about identity and survival in a world that tries hard to hold on to traditions.
Cowboy Cred: This series, which marked one of the final producing projects for the Sundance Kid himself, Robert Redford, reclaims the Western by shifting perspective to a Navajo point of view. The land, the quiet, and morality are classic Western elements, now at long last centered on the people who were always there. And at the center of the action is Joe, who, among other things, is hoping to regain the love of his wife (Deanna Allison) through recovering his bond with Navajo culture. Dark Winds premiered in 2022; AMC recently unveiled Season 4 of the series and has already announced that a fifth will debut in 2027. Streaming now, AMC+ & Netflix
Wind River (Movie)
The Tale: When a young Native American woman is found dead on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, wildlife tracker Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner, right) teams with inexperienced FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) to uncover the truth. The ensuing investigation peels back layers of grief, isolation, and institutional neglect, revealing a community far too accustomed to being overlooked. The cold is ever-present here; in fact, in the end, it ultimately proves fatal for the worst of the perpetrators of the crime. Even as the killer is revealed, the emotional damage lingers. And, as a final title card reminds us, “While missing person statistics are compiled for every other demographic, none exist for Native American women.”
Cowboy Cred: Writer Taylor Sheridan makes his Western directing debut with this 2017 drama. Start with High Plains Drifter, add bitter modern realism, package it within a taut thriller framework, and you’ve got Wind River. Renner’s Lambert is a frontier scout in the classic sense: hyper-competent, emotionally scarred and deeply tied to the land, while Olsen’s Banner represents the Old West outsider. Sheridan follows the Western tradition of using landscape as an antagonist, only the danger isn’t outlaws; it’s exposure and the indifference to Native Americans. Streaming now, Netflix
Lone Star (Movie)
The Tale: Texas sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) investigates a decades-old murder that implicates his legendary lawman father, Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey), forcing him to confront the larger-than-life stories on which he was raised. Past (1950s) and present (1990s) blur as buried truths—and actual skeletons—come to light, putting lives, reputations, and relationships at risk.
Cowboy Cred: This vivid and thought-provoking 1996 gem from writer/director John Sayles veers into revisionist Western territory, coming across as something of a late–20th century version of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It digs deep into heroism, mythmaking, interracial romance, and the question of who gets written into history. Sayles, via his Oscar-nominated screenplay, posits that the badge still very much matters, but so does the truth behind it. As for additional cowboy cred, there’s genre veteran Kris Kristofferson as the saga’s racist, hiss-worthy antagonist. Streaming now, Prime Video
Walker (TV Show)
The Tale: Back in the day, from 1993 to 2001, Walker, Texas Ranger‘s Cordell Walker (Chuck Norris) patrolled his turf with near-mythic certainty, dispensing justice through fists, roundhouse kicks, and moral lectures. Bad guys threatened the community, Walker stopped them, and order was promptly restored before everyone headed to the bar to celebrate. The CW reboot, which ran for four seasons (2021–24), cast Supernatural veteran Jared Padalecki as the titular character, reimagining him as a widowed father of two who returns to Austin to be with his kids, track down his wife’s killer, and solve local crimes without the karate action.
Cowboy Cred: Walker is Walker, Texas Ranger with more heart and family drama. Padalecki’s Ranger is tough and loving and makes mistakes; he collaborates and faces emotional consequences for doing his job. Norris, on the other hand, came across as very much a throwback lawman: uncomplicated, unbreakable and always right. The new Walker talks—a lot, often about feelings and doing the right thing — and cries too, making him a fragile but also formidable figure. Add in horses, lassos, a hero who bends the rules but never breaks them, and Padalecki’s swell cowboy hat, and you’ve got a solid contemporary Western. And unlike the original Norris series, this Walker version has that rare thing — a female Texas Ranger partner (played by Lindsey Morgan) to boot. Streaming now, HBO Max
The Hateful Eight (Movie)
The Tale: Eight deeply unpleasant people — including bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell), Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson, left), Daisy Domergue (Oscar-nominated Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) — wait out a blizzard in a Wyoming haberdashery, each hiding secrets and ulterior motives. As the paranoia grows and grows, alliances shift, blood spurts, and the body count rises. The film unfolds like a slow, venomous card game where everyone is cheating. A hateful eight indeed.
Cowboy Cred: Structurally, this movie plays like Stagecoach by way of Agatha Christie, but spiritually it’s closer to The Wild Bunch. Writer-director Quentin Tarantino dismantles the myth of post–Civil War reconciliation in this 2015 film, exposing the violence and racism that Westerns once smoothed over. The frontier here isn’t noble; it’s poisoned. Some moviegoers find the languid pace and extended tense sequences dull, while others consider them to be riveting—in other words, the movie is in the best tradition of spaghetti Westerns. Speaking of which: The legendary Ennio Morricone won his only Academy Award for his Hateful Eight score. Streaming now, Peacock
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