r/Westerns • u/Puzzleheaded_Grab148 • 4d ago
Recommendation Westerns that have a Cormac McCarthy vibe?
I guess I’m looking for stories that are both harsh and poetic.
Any ideas?
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u/Corninator 4d ago
I mean, No Country for Old Men is a modern-day western in my book, and he wrote it.
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u/Used-Gas-6525 4d ago
Every Peckinpah western. Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid is incredible (only watch the director's cut. The theatrical was shit and everyone, including Sam completely disavowed it), and of course, The Wild Bunch is a masterwork as well.
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u/Confident-Abrocoma26 4d ago
I may revisit Pat Garret and Billy the Kid after reading this. I stopped watching it halfway through last time, was unaware there was a director’s cut
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u/Used-Gas-6525 4d ago
Yeah, the studio hacked 20 minutes out of it with no input from any of the creatives involved. That's why it has been largely forgotten (save for the incredible Bob Dylan soundtrack). Honestly, It's probably in my top 3 westerns, even if I throw Deadwood into the mix, which might be my favourite old west thing ever put on film.
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u/Ransom__Stoddard 3d ago
The Criterion Collection released a 50th Anniversary cut that restores a lot of those cut scenes. It flows a lot better and fleshes out Pat's motivations a bit more.
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u/Badmime1 3d ago
Just showing his eventual fate at the beginning, and how meaningless his selling out is, and having that scene with his wife’s reaction to him - just a few minutes back and it’s brilliant.
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u/Used-Gas-6525 3d ago
I knew they released the director's cut 15-20 years ago, but it's nice to know that Criterion is giving it some love.
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u/reterical 3d ago
Wind River has a similar vibe. And a modern, McCarthyian Western can be found in Sicário.
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u/bigbabyjesus76 4d ago
"The Sisters Brothers" by Patrick DeWitt. Kinda funny, kinda odd, and definitely "harsh", I really enjoyed the story. Well-written, too. I know there's a movie, I haven't seen it yet.
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u/Ransom__Stoddard 3d ago
Some of Larry McMurtry's work kind of touches the edges of McCarthy's, although McMurtry uses humor where McCarthy almost never does. I particularly recommend the 4 books of "The Berrybender Narratives"--Sin Killer, The Wandering Hill, By Sorrow's River, and Folly and Glory.
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u/TwistedFated 4d ago
The Proposition comes closest imho.
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u/tiger_seven 4d ago
I once read that John Hillcoat and Nick Cave made The Proposition precisely because they couldn’t secure the rights to Blood Meridian.
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u/Adventurous-Chef-370 4d ago
Hillcoat was McCarthy’s pick to do blood Meridian before he passed, I think he’s still working on it with McCarthy’s son!
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u/EbbRevolutionary7475 3d ago
The Shooting.
It's a little weird, and a young Jack Nicholson played a quiet psychopath better than I've ever seen.
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u/travestymcgee 3d ago
For harsh and poetic, Jim Harrison’s novellas “Revenge” and ”Legends of the Fall” (in Legends of the Fall). Highly recommend his generational Western novels, Dalva and The Road Home; The Farmers Daughter (which also contains my favorite neo-Western werewolf story); and “The Beige Dolorosa” in Julip.
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u/Rare-Satisfaction-82 4d ago
Elmore Leonard, better known for his crime novels, wrote a number of Westerns. Several were made into movies. An easy read is Hombre, which was made into a move with Paul Newman.
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u/burntbridges20 4d ago
Leonard’s work always has a little bit of a fun, campy vibe, even his more serious books, but I do greatly enjoy him almost as much as McCarthy. I don’t really think they have a similar vibe, though.
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u/Rlpniew 3d ago
Have you ever noticed that Leonard sometimes falls in love with his characters, even the villains, so much, that he really doesn’t want anything bad to happen to them so they pretty much get away with things in the end? (there are exceptions, of course.)
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u/burntbridges20 3d ago
Absolutely. He loves his villains. You can tell they’re his best buddies and just little rascals. Aw shucks I guess another career criminal/murderer is going to make out with part of the treasure lol.
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u/Ransom__Stoddard 4d ago
Other notable films adapted from Elmore Leonard novels/short stories are:
- 3:10 to Yuma
- The Tall T (Scott/Boetticher collab, adapted from "The Captives")
- Valdez is Coming
- Last Stand at Saber River (Tom Selleck TV western, so it's not particularly gritty)
- Border Shootout (adapted from "The Law at Randado"
- The Moonshine War (although not technically a Western, it has some elements and is a heck of a good book. The movie is fun too)
And then there are the Raylan Givens novels and short stories, that are also technically not Westerns, but Raylan's a frontier lawman at heart. The TV series "Justified" is one of my favorites.
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u/Carbuncle2024 3d ago
The tv character of Raylan is one of the absolute best impersonations of a written character taken from the pages of the source novels (IMHO)...I also really like Raylan as a character..and recommend these Elmore books 📚. 🤠
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u/Pinup_Frenzy 4d ago
Godless
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u/Ghosttownhermit9 3d ago
Who wrote Godless ?
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u/Pinup_Frenzy 3d ago
It’s a Netflix mini series written and directed by Scott Frank.
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u/External-Emotion8050 2d ago
Oddly enough..., somewhat based on a true story where a mine explosion killed all the men in a small town. The women carried on under threat of violence. I guess we already knew they could do everything anyway!
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u/boris_parsley 4d ago
Bone Tomahawk
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u/GidimXul 4d ago
Not sure if Bone Tomahawk was ever a novel, but A Congregation of Jackals and Wraiths of the Broken Land are both excellent, violent westerns by the same author (Craig Zahler).
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u/HomerBalzac 4d ago
Agreed! Zahler’s novels are absolutely riveting reads.
I’d love to see film adaptations of both of his Western novels.“Wraiths” is part-Horror, all-Western. “Jackals” is a terrific Western where the sense of doom and dread hangs from every page.
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u/GidimXul 4d ago
Have you seen Dragged Across Concrete or Brawl in Cell Block 99? Brawl convinced me that Vince Vaughn should play The Judge in the Blood Meridian movie. It's a controversial take but I think Bone Tomahawk is probably the best western since Unforgiven. Yes, I know when Tombstone was released.
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u/HomerBalzac 1d ago
Yes!
Excellent job by Vince Vaughn. Gritty as hell film.Dragged Across Concrete was almost as brutally violent to watch as Zahler’s crime thriller Mean Business On North Ganson was to read.
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u/MachoDix69420 4d ago
Are you looking for Book or movie? I'm reading Desperadoes by Ron Hansen right now and I had it sold to me as McCarthy lite. It's pretty great. Kinda slow sometimes but the prose is on point and the characters seem pretty realistic.
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u/Adventurous-Chef-370 4d ago
I love Ron Hansen’s stuff. Desperados and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford are fantastic! I need to read some more of his work
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u/MojaveJoe1992 2d ago
In terms of films, I'd recommend Cemetery Without Crosses (1969), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), Lawman (1971) and Lonestar (1996).
If you read comics you could do worse than reading Pulp (2020), That Texas Blood (2021-2023) and it's prequel The Enfield Gang Massacre (2024).
TV series wise, you can't go wrong with the likes of Deadwood (2004-2006), the original series of Justified (2010-2015) and Hell On Wheels (2011-2016).
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u/DIY14410 2d ago
Hmmmmm. Some good suggestions, although I can't wrap my head around any overlap of Ballad of Cable Hogue and Cormack McCarthy
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u/Hoosier108 3d ago
Read James Carlos Blake, especially In the Rogue Blood (which reads like a more accessible version of Blood Meridian) and Country of Bad Wolfs.
Some of the Jonah Hex comics run by Palmiotti and Gray have that dark, introspective, psychotic feel.
H. A DeRosso’s .44 is a really dark character study of a cowboy who has accidentally drifted into being a gunhand.
Guthrie’s western series starting with Big Sky and The Way West have an element of that dark character study.
Lonesome Dove is an amazing read and challenges your sense of self and values, but it lacks the dark appeal of Blood Meridian.
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u/DIY14410 2d ago
Any of several spaghetti westerns directed by Sergio Corbucci
Once Upon a Time in the West
McCabe and Mrs. Miller -- if you squint
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u/WhatIsThatNietzsche 1d ago
The Proposition…and I’m lifting that from Roger Ebert who said the same in his review for the film.
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u/Clear_Aide3513 1d ago
I'm having trouble getting into All the Pretty Horses because it feels a lot like Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry.
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u/BaphometBubble 1d ago
100% the book Butcher's Crossing By John Williams is what you want to read next...Even Cormac himself sites this novel as having a profound effect on his writing. Beautiful in imagery, bleak in subject matter, and prose that never talk down to the reader.
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u/Desperate-Back8458 3d ago
I got this. I highly recommend Soledad(published in 1977) by R. G. Vliet. Vliet is almost completely unknown today but he was an excellent writer. I would describe this book and the difficult, bizarre and fascinating Scorpio Rising, published in 1985 as harsh, poetic westerns.
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u/Adventurous-Chef-370 4d ago
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Unforgiven
Hostiles
The Proposition (Australian western)