The year is 1878, Lincoln County, John Tunstall, a British ranch owner, hires six rebellious boys as "regulators" to protect his ranch against the ruthless Santa Fe Ring. When Tunstall is killed in an ambush, the Regulators, led by the wild-tempered Billy the Kid (Estevez), declare war on the Ring. As their vendetta turns into a bloody rampage, they are branded outlaws, becoming the objects of the largest manhunt in the western history.
A legend forged in a blaze of glory. Good weather for a hanging. Billy the Kid's outlaw ingrates are penned like sows in a Lincoln County pit and the Kid is strapped in a nearby hotel. But the hangman will go home disappointed tonight. Billy cleverly breaks himself - then his gang - free. One of the West's greatest legends lives to ride another day. By 1879, the Lincoln County Wars have ended but bad blood endures. Billy and his men look to Mexico for haven - if they can elude Billy's one-time friend, pursuing Sheriff Pat Garrett (William Petersen).
Clint Eastwood is a hard-hitting high plains drifter who rides into town and single-handedly rescues a local nun (Shirley MacLaine) from a gang of attackers. After meeting a band of Mexican revolutionaries bent on resisting the French occupation of Mexico, the cowboy and Sister Sara decide to join forces with the freedom fighters and set off on a deadly mission to capture the enemy's garrison. But along the way, a steamy romance develops between them when the soft-spoken hero discovers the nun is not what she seems.
Armed with a wry sense of humor and a straight-shooting sidearm, James Garner (Maverick, My Fellow Americans) fights for peace, justice and fun in the outrageous, irreverent and "very funny" (Los Angeles Times) farce co-starring Joan Hackett, Walter Brennan, Harry Morgan and Jack Elam. Support Your Local Sheriff is "sheer entertainment from start to finish" (Boxoffice)! On his way to Australia, frontier opportunist Jason McCullough (Garner) stumbles into a small gold-rush town and decides to earn a little extra pocket money by accepting a temporary assignment as their sheriff.
James Garner returns for this pseudosequel to Support Your Local Sheriff, this time as a gigolo con man mistaken for a legendary killer. Escaping matrimonial entanglements, he lands in the town of Purgatory in the midst of a raging war between gold miners racing for the mother lode. In a play right out of Maverick, he quickly casts drifter Jack Elam into the gunfighter role and names himself the man's agent, selling his services to the highest bidder and pocketing a sizable commission.
In Pale Rider, Clint Eastwood returned to the saddle after nine years - and Western movies were riding high again. Here the star/director crafted an exciting film in the suspenseful tradition of Shane and High Noon. After corporate mining boss Coy LaHood (Richard Dysart) begins a campaign of terror to drive independent pan miners out of the area, a nameless stranger called Preacher (Eastwood) rides into the underdogs' camp. He becomes their avenger. The tycoon then hires a badge-wearing killer and his duster-shrouded deputies, men loyal to whomever pays the most. LaHood pays gold.
The so-called spaghetti Western achieved its apotheosis in Sergio Leone's magnificently mythic (and utterly outlandish) Once upon a Time in the West. After a series of international hits starring Clint Eastwood (from A Fistful of Dollars to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), Leone outdid himself with this spectacular, larger-than-life, horse-operatic epic about how the West was won.
Robert Rodriguez returns with the mythic guitar-singing hero, El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas), in the third installment of the El Mariachi/Desperado trilogy. The saga continues as El Mariachi makes his way across a rugged landscape on the trail of Barrillo (Willem Dafoe), a kingpin who is planning a coup against the president of Mexico. Enlisted by Sands (Johnny Depp), a corrupt CIA agent, El Mariachi demands retribution, and the adventure begins. The character, made famous by Banderas, remains a slinger of guitars and guns, a tragic and bloodied hero, but a survivor forever.
As The Outlaw Josey Wales, Clint Eastwood is ideal as a wary, fast-drawing loner, akin to the Man With No Name from his European Westerns. But unlike that other mythic outlaw, Josey Wales has a name - and a heart. That heart opens up as the action unfolds. After avenging his family's brutal murder, Wales is pursued by a pack of killers. He prefers to travel alone, but ragtag outcasts (including Sondra Locke and Chief Dan George) are drawn to him - and Wales can't bring himself to leave them unprotected. Time called it one of 1976's best movies.
This terrific Walter Hill Western follows the careers of the James and Younger brothers--and uses the nifty idea of casting actual clans of acting siblings in the roles. Thus, the James brothers are played by James and Stacy Keach; the Youngers by David, Keith, and Robert Carradine; the Millers by Randy and Dennis Quaid; and the Fords by Christopher and Nicholas Guest. Hill, working with an evocative Ry Cooder score, creates a film that is at once breathtakingly exciting and elegiac in its treatment of these post-Civil War outlaws.
