Western

• Django Unchained (DVD + UV Copy) | DVD | (20/05/2013) from £9.90  |  Saving you £10.09 (50.50%)  |  RRP £19.99

  Written and directed by Academy Award winning director Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs), Django Unchained stars Oscar winner Jamie Foxx (Ray) as Django, a freed slave who gathers help from German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) whilst on a mission to save his wife from a ruthless Mississippi plantation keeper (Leonardo DiCaprio). With Dr. King Schultz on a mission himself to track down the murderous Brittle brothers, he and Django must now team together and assist each other using vital bounty hunting skills to achieve their objectives. Also starring Kerry Washington and Samuel L. Jackson, Django Unchained is a bold, bloody and gripping story of the difficult times endured in the South at the time of the Civil War. With a touch of light comedy along the way, it once again displays Tarantino's ability to astound viewers. - T.P

• Django Unchained (Blu-ray + UV Copy) | Blu Ray | (20/05/2013) from £14.50  |  Saving you £10.49 (42.00%)  |  RRP £24.99

  Written and directed by Academy Award winning director Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs), Django Unchained stars Oscar winner Jamie Foxx (Ray) as Django, a freed slave who gathers help from German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) whilst on a mission to save his wife from a ruthless Mississippi plantation keeper (Leonardo DiCaprio). With Dr. King Schultz on a mission himself to track down the murderous Brittle brothers, he and Django must now team together and assist each other using vital bounty hunting skills to achieve their objectives. Also starring Kerry Washington and Samuel L. Jackson, Django Unchained is a bold, bloody and gripping story of the difficult times endured in the South at the time of the Civil War. With a touch of light comedy along the way, it once again displays Tarantino's ability to astound viewers. - T.P

• Django Unchained - Limited Edition Steelbook (Blu-ray + UV Copy) | Blu Ray | (20/05/2013) from £18.99  |  Saving you £8.00 (29.60%)  |  RRP £26.99

  Written and directed by Academy Award winning director Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs), Django Unchained stars Oscar winner Jamie Foxx (Ray) as Django, a freed slave who gathers help from German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) whilst on a mission to save his wife from a ruthless Mississippi plantation keeper (Leonardo DiCaprio). With Dr. King Schultz on a mission himself to track down the murderous Brittle brothers, he and Django must now team together and assist each other using vital bounty hunting skills to achieve their objectives. Also starring Kerry Washington and Samuel L. Jackson, Django Unchained is a bold, bloody and gripping story of the difficult times endured in the South at the time of the Civil War. With a touch of light comedy along the way, it once again displays Tarantino's ability to astound viewers. - T.P

• Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove (Re-mastered) | DVD | (14/04/2008) from £6.89  |  Saving you £13.10 (65.50%)  |  RRP £19.99

  Hailed as a masterpiece by critics and audiences alike Lonesome Dove brings to life all the magnificent drama and romance of the West. Winner of seven Emmy Awards and one of the highest rated miniseries in television history this exciting re-creation of Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel captured the American pioneer spirit with its sweeping story and inspired performances. Robert Duvall Tommy Lee Jones and Anjelica Huston star in the tale of two former Texas Rangers who leave the South Texas town of Lonesome Dove on an epic 2500-mile cattle drive to the lush ranch country of Montana. Already a collectible classic Lonesome Dove is based on Brokeback Mountain the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Larry McMurtry. This edition has been completely digitally re-mastered.

• True Grit | DVD | (13/06/2011) from £2.19  |  Saving you £16.99 (85.00%)  |  RRP £19.99

  True Grit is a powerful story of vengeance and valour set in an unforgiving and unpredictable frontier where justice is simple and mercy is rare. Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is determined to avenge her father's blood by capturing Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) the man who shot and killed him for two pieces of gold. Just fourteen she enlists the help of Rooster Cogburn Academy Award Winner Jeff Bridges) a one-eyed trigger-happy U.S. Marshall with an affinity for drinking and hardened Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Academy Award Winner Matt Damon) to track the fleeing Chaney. Despite their differences their ruthless determination leads them on a perilous adventure that can only have one outcome: retribution.

• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £3.47  |  Saving you £16.52 (82.60%)  |  RRP £19.99

  Dating from 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has never lost its popularity or its unusual appeal as a star-driven Western that tinkers with the genre's conventions and comes up with something both terrifically entertaining and--typical of its period--a tad paranoid. Paul Newman plays the legendary outlaw Butch Cassidy as an eternal optimist and self-styled visionary, conjuring dreams of banks just ripe for the picking all over the world. Robert Redford is his more level-headed partner, the sharp-shooting Sundance Kid. The film, written by William Goldman (The Princess Bride) and directed by George Roy Hill (The Sting), basically begins as a freewheeling story about robbing trains but soon becomes a chase as a relentless posse--always seen at a great distance like some remote authority--forces Butch and Sundance into the hills and, finally, Bolivia. Weakened a little by feel-good inclinations (a scene involving bicycle tricks and the song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" is sort of Hollywood flower power), the film maintains an interesting tautness, and the chemistry between Redford and Newman is rare. (A factoid: Newman first offered the Sundance part to Jack Lemmon.) --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com On the DVD: This anamorphic widescreen print of the 2.35:1 Panavision original looks marvellously crisp, highlighting the sepia tinting and washed-out, over-exposed look of the film nicely and making the best of the deep focus cinematography. The mono soundtrack sounds clean and clear in Dolby 2.0. The commentary track is hosted by documentary-maker Robert Crawford with contributions from George Roy Hill, cinematographer Conrad Hall, and lyricist Hal David (who chips in during the "Raindrops" sequence). The 40-minute documentary dates from 1968 and is narrated by director Hill, who talks in detail about the making-of process, comments on his relationship with the three principals (Katharine Ross was the difficult one apparently), and adds little nuggets such as how they sprayed the bull's testicles to make him charge at the end of the bicycle scene. Also included are a series of absorbing 1994 interviews with all the main players: Newman, Redford, Ross, writer William Goldman, and composer Burt Bacharach. Trailers, Production Notes and an Alternate Credit Roll complete an attractive package. --Mark Walker

• Once Upon a Time in the West -- Special Collector's Edition (2 discs) | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £4.38  |  Saving you £15.61 (78.10%)  |  RRP £19.99

  Sergio Leone had to be persuaded to return to the Western for Once Upon a Time in the West after the success of his "Dollars" trilogy. The result is a masterpiece that expands the vision of the earlier movies in every way. It could as easily have been called The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Blonde as Charles Bronson steps into the No-Name role as the harmonica-playing vengeance seeker, Henry Fonda trashes his Wyatt Earp image as a dead-faced, blue-eyed killer who has sold out to the rapacious railroad; Jason Robards provides humanitarian footnotes as a life-loving but doomed bandit and the astonishingly beautiful Claudia Cardinale shows that all these grown-up little boys are less fit to make a country than one determined widow-mother-whore-angel-everywoman. The opening sequence--Woody Strode, Al Mulock and Jack Elam waiting for a train and bothered by a fly and dripping water--is masterful bravura, homing in on tiny details for a fascinating but eventless length of time before Bronson arrives for the lightning-fast shoot-out. With striking widescreen compositions and epic running time, this picture truly wins points for length and width. On the DVD: Once Upon a Time in the West on disc is the transfer fans have been waiting for: the longest available version of the film in shimmering widescreen (enhanced for 16:9 TVs) which lends full impact to Leone's long shots of Monument Valley scenery or bustling crowds of activity, but also highlights his ultra-close images as Bronson's beady eyes or Cardinale's luscious pout fill the entire screen. A commentary track is mostly by expert Sir Christopher Frayling, with input from other academics, participants and enthusiasts--it's good on the detail, and Alex Cox winningly points out that one scene bizarrely can't be reconciled with what happens before or after it. Disc 2 has four featurettes which, taken together, add up to a feature-length documentary on the film, and though overlapping the commentary slightly offer a wealth of further good stuff, plus the elegant Cardinale's undiminished smile. Also included is the trailer, notes on the cast, menu screens with generous selections from Ennio Morricone's score, stills gallery, comparison shots from the film and contemporary snapshots of the locations. --Kim Newman

• 3:10 To Yuma | DVD | (28/01/2008) from £3.99  |  Saving you £16.00 (80.00%)  |  RRP £19.99

  In Arizona in the late 1800's infamous outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) and his vicious gang of thieves and murderers plagued the Southern Railroad. When Wade is captured Civil War veteran Dan Evans (Christian Bale) struggling to survive on his drought-plagued ranch volunteers to deliver him alive to the 3:10 to Yuma a train that will take the killer to trial. On the trail Evans and Wade each from very different worlds begin to earn each other's respect. But with Wade's outfit on their trail - and dangers at every turn - the mission soon becomes a violent impossible journey toward each man's destiny.

• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance | Blu Ray | (03/06/2013) from £9.00  |  Saving you £10.99 (55.00%)  |  RRP £19.99

  "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." That's more than the code of a newspaperman in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; it's practically the operating credo of director John Ford, the most honoured of American filmmakers. In this late film from a long career, Ford looks at the civilising of an Old West town, Shinbone, through the sad memories of settlers looking back. In the town's wide-open youth, two-fisted Westerner John Wayne and tenderfoot newcomer James Stewart clash over a woman (Vera Miles) but ultimately unite against the notorious outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Ford's nostalgia for the past is tempered by his stark approach, unusual for the visual poet of Stagecoach and The Searchers. The two heavyweights, Wayne and Stewart, are good together, with Wayne the embodiment of rugged individualism and Stewart the idealistic prophet of the civilisation that will eventually tame the Wild West. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance may be the saddest Western ever made, closer to an elegy than an action movie, and as cleanly beautiful as its central symbol, the cactus rose. --Robert Horton

• The Outlaw Josey Wales | DVD | (06/06/2005) from £3.49  |  Saving you £10.50 (75.10%)  |  RRP £13.99

  The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Clint Eastwood's 31st film as an actor, 20th as international star and fifth as director, was the first to win him widespread respect. Critics had grumbled when the producer-star replaced Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) in the director's chair a week into shooting. They ended up cheering when Eastwood delivered both his most sympathetic performance to date and--with the heroic collaboration of cinematographer Bruce Surtees--an impressive Panavision epic that stresses the scruffiness, rather than the scenic splendours, of frontier life. During the Civil War, Union "Redlegs" attack Southerner Josey Wales's dirt farm and wipe out his family. Seeking vengeance, Wales throws in with a company of Reb guerrillas. Tagged as a renegade after the surrender, he flees west into the vastness of the Indian Territories, where, quite unintentionally, he finds himself cast as the straight-shooting paterfamilias of an ever-growing, spectacularly motley community of misfits and castaways. This is to say, Josey's personal quest for survival and something like peace of mind evolves into a funky, multicultural allegory of the healing of America. Josey Wales is good, not great, Eastwood. The big-gun fetishism can get tiresome, and too many characters exist only to serve as six-gun (and at one point Gatling gun) fodder. But mostly the film is agreeably eccentric, and almost furtively sweet in spirit--a key transitional title in the Eastwood filmography, and one of his most entertaining. --Richard T Jameson

• Appaloosa | DVD | (02/02/2009) from £3.44  |  Saving you £16.55 (82.80%)  |  RRP £19.99

  When two gunmen Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortenson) arrive in Appaloosa they find a small dusty and lawless town suffering at the hands of renegade rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons). Bragg has not only taken supplies horses and women for his own but also has left the city marshal and a deputy for dead. In Bragg they an unusually wily adversary who raises the stakes by playing with emotions. It is now up to Cole and Hitch to stand against the actions of the renegade rancher which have already taken their toll on the town.

• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford | DVD | (31/03/2008) from £2.73  |  Saving you £18.26 (87.00%)  |  RRP £20.99

  Of all the movies made about or glancingly involving the 19th-century outlaw Jesse Woodson James, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the most reflective, most ambitious, most intricately fascinating, and indisputably most beautiful. Based on the novel of the same name by Ron Hansen, it picks up James late in his career, a few hours before his final train robbery, then covers the slow catastrophe of the gang's breakup over the next seven months even as the boss himself settles into an approximation of genteel retirement. But in another sense all of the movie is later than that. The very title assumes the audience's familiarity with James as a figure out of history and legend, and our awareness that he was--will be--murdered in his parlor one quiet afternoon by a back-shooting crony. The film--only the second to be made by New Zealand-born writer-director Andrew Dominik--reminds us that Dominik's debut film, Chopper, was the cunningly off-kilter portrait of another real-life criminal psychopath who became a kind of rock star to his society. The Jesse James of this telling is no Robin Hood robbing the rich to give to the poor, and that train robbery we witness is punctuated by acts of gratuitous brutality, not gallantry. Nineteen-year-old Bob Ford (Casey Affleck) seeks to join the James gang out of hero worship stoked by the dime novels he secretes under his bed, but his glam hero (Brad Pitt) is a monster who takes private glee in infecting his accomplices with his own paranoia, then murdering them for it. In the careful orchestration of James's final moments, there's even a hint that he takes satisfaction in his own demise. Affleck and Pitt (who co-produced with Ridley Scott, among others) are mesmerising in the title roles, but the movie is enriched by an exceptional supporting cast: Sam Shepard as Jesse's older, more stable brother Frank; Sam Rockwell as Bob Ford's own brother Charlie, whose post-assassination descent into madness is astonishing to behold; Paul Schneider, Garret Dillahunt, and Jeremy Renner as three variously doomed gang members; and Mary-Louise Parker, who as Jesse's wife Zee has few lines yet manages with looks and body language to invoke a well nigh-novelistic back-story for herself. There are also electrifying cameos by James Carville, doing solid actorly work as the governor of Missouri; Ted Levine, as a lawman of antic spirit; and Nick Cave, composer of the film's score (with Warren Ellis) and screenwriter of the Aussie western The Proposition, suddenly towering over a late scene to perform the folk song that set the terms for the book and movie's title. Still, the real co-star is Roger Deakins, probably the finest cinematographer at work today. The landscapes of the movie (mostly in Alberta and Manitoba) will linger in the memory as long as the distinctive faces, and we seem to feel the sting of its snows on our cheeks. Interior scenes are equally persuasive. Few westerns have conveyed so tangibly the bleakness and austerity of the spaces people of the frontier called home, and sought in vain to warm with human spirit. --Richard T. Jameson

• Clint Eastwood Collection - A Fistful Of Dollars/The Good, The Bad And The Ugly/For A Few Dollars More/Hang 'Em High | Blu Ray | (30/08/2010) from £16.99  |  Saving you £23.00 (57.50%)  |  RRP £39.99

  A Fistful Of Dollars: The first of the 'spaghetti westerns' A Fistful Of Dollars became an instant cult hit and launched the film careers of Italian Writer-Director Sergio Leone and a little known American television actor named Clint Eastwood. As the lean cold eyed cobra-quick gunfighter - Clint became the first of the 'anti heroes'. A Fistful Of Dollars is the western taken to the extreme - with unremitting violence gritty realism tongue-in-cheek humour and striking visuals. For A Few Dollars More: A Fistful of Dollars had proven so successful that a sequel was inevitable. The superbly scripted For A Few Dollars More tells the tale of a ruthless quest to track down the notorious bandit El Indio played by Gian Maria Volonte by an unforgettable alliance between ruthless gun-slingers Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. Sergio Leone's direction is both violent and operatic and Ennio Morricone's atmospheric score keeps the tension taut as the action moves from jail breaks and hold ups to spectacular gun battles. The Good The Bad And The Ugly: In the third of Eastwood's spaghetti trilogy Director Sergio Leone substitutes the upright puritan Protestant ethos so familiar in Hollywood westerns for a seedy cynical standpoint towards death and morality. The complex plot of bloodshed and betrayal winds its way through the American Civil War following a team of brutal bandits battling to unearth a fortune buried beneath an unmarked grave and boasts a fine Ennio Morricone score featuring a main theme that reached No.1 in the world's pop charts. Hang 'Em High: They riddled him with bullets. They strung him up. They left him to die. But they made two fatal mistakes: they hanged the wrong man... and they didn't finish the job. In his first American-made western Clint Eastwood indelibly carves his niche as the quintessential tough guy - cool-headed iron-willed and unrelenting in the pursuit of revenge.

• The Magnificent Seven | DVD | (11/06/2001) from £2.25  |  Saving you £12.60 (70.00%)  |  RRP £17.99

  Akira Kurosawa's rousing Seven Samurai was a natural for an American remake--after all, the codes and conventions of ancient Japan and the Wild West (at least the mythical movie West) are not so very far apart. Thus The Magnificent Seven effortlessly turns samurai into cowboys (the same trick worked more than once: Kurosawa's Yojimbo became Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars). The beleaguered denizens of a Mexican village, weary of attacks by banditos, hire seven gunslingers to repel the invaders once and for all. The gunmen are cool and capable, with most of the actors playing them just on the cusp of '60s stardom: Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn. The man who brings these warriors together is Yul Brynner, the baddest bald man in the West. There's nothing especially stylish about the approach of veteran director John Sturges (The Great Escape), but the storytelling is clear and strong, and the charisma of the young guns fairly flies off the screen. If that isn't enough to awaken the 12-year-old kid inside anyone, the unforgettable Elmer Bernstein music will do it: bum-bum-ba-bum, bum-ba-bum-ba-bum... Followed by three inferior sequels, Return of the Seven, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and The Magnificent Seven Ride! --Robert Horton

• The John Wayne Ultimate Collection | DVD | (21/09/2009) from £23.00  |  Saving you £26.99 (54.00%)  |  RRP £49.99

  The John Wayne Ultimate Collection

• Once A Upon A Time In The West | Blu Ray | (05/09/2011) from £7.49  |  Saving you £12.50 (62.50%)  |  RRP £19.99

  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. (And make no mistake: this is the wide, wide West, folks--so the widescreen/letter-boxed version is strongly recommended.) The unholy trinity of Italian cinema--Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Dario Argento--concocted the story about a woman (Claudia Cardinale) hanging onto her land in hopes that the transcontinental railroad would reach her before a steely-eyed, black-hearted killer (Fonda) does. (The film's advertising slogan was: "There were three men in her life. One to take her ... one to love her ... and one to kill her.") Meanwhile, Leone shoots his stars' faces as if they were expansive Western landscapes, and their towering bodies as if they were looming rock formations in John Ford's Monument Valley. --Jim Emerson, Amazon.com

• Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid | Blu Ray | (03/06/2013) from £10.91  |  Saving you £5.08 (31.80%)  |  RRP £15.99

  The Sundance Kid is the fastest gun in the West his sidekick Butch is a dreamer always planning that bigger better bank raid. But things are getting tougher and soon the accident-prone anti-heroes decide it's time to head south and disappear into legend. Winner of 4 Oscars including Best Screenplay for William Goldman and Best Song ('Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head') and Best Score for Burt Bacharach.

• Clint Eastwood Collection - For A Few Dollars More/The Good, The Bad And The Ugly/A Fistful Of Dollars/Hang 'Em High | DVD | (13/08/2007) from £9.99  |  Saving you £20.00 (66.70%)  |  RRP £29.99

  Title Comprise: For A Few Dollars More: the tale of a ruthless quest to track down the notorious bandit El Indio played by Gian Maria Volonte. The film is also noted for its array of weaponry a veritable arsenal of rifles that became so operatic and Ennio Morricone's atmospheric score keeps the tension taut as the action moves from Jail breaks and hold-ups to spectacular gun battles. The Good The Bad And The Ugly:written by Age Scarpelli Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Leone is the third and last western in Clint Eastwood's spaghetti trilogy. Director Sergio Leone substitutes for the upright puritan Protestant ethos so familiar in Hollywood westerns a seedy cynical standpoint towards death and mortality as a team of brutal bandits battle to unearth a fortune buried beneath an unmarked grave. Joining Clint clearly ""The Good"" is the irredeemably ""Bad"" Lee and the resolutely ""Ugly"" Eli Wallach. The complete plot of bloodshed and betrayal winds its way through the American Civil War filmed to resemble the French battlefields of World War One to end in the climatic Dance Of Death. Arguably the quintessential Italian Western this 1966 film boasts a fine Ennio Morricone score featuring a main theme that reached No. 1 in the world's pop charts. A Fistful Of Dollars:The first of the ""spaghetti westerns"" A Fistful Of Dollars became an instant cult hit. It also launched the film careers of Italian Writer-Director Sergio Leone and a little known American television actor named Clint Eastwood. As the lean cold-eye cobra-quick gunfighter - Clint became the first of the ""anti-heroes"". The cynical enigmatic loner with a clouded past is the same character Eastwood fans have been savouring ever since. A Fistful Of Dollars is the western taken to the extreme - with unremitting violence gritty realism and tongue-in-cheek humour. Leone's direction is taut and stylish and the visuals are striking - from the breathtaking panoramas (in Spain) to the extreme close-ups of quivering lips and darting eyes before the shoot-out begins. And all are accented by renowned film composer Ennio Morricone's quirky haunting score. Hang 'Em High:Oklahoma 1873. Jed Cooper mistaken for a rustler and killer is lynched on the spot by crooked lawman Captain Wilson and a rampaging band of vigilantes. But as Wilson and his gang flee the scene there's one very important detail they've overlooked: Cooper is still alive! Saved in the nick of time by a sheriff Cooper takes on the job of deputy marshal in order to bring hard-handed justice to the Oklahoma territory and to the nine men who ""done him wrong""...

• Django, Prepare A Coffin | Blu Ray | (10/06/2013) from £12.77  |  Saving you £7.22 (36.10%)  |  RRP £19.99

  Django the drifter returns in this classic Sixties Spaghetti Western from Ferdinando Baldi (Texas Addio Comin' At Ya!) starring Terence Hill (They Call Me Trinity) as the wandering gunslinger hired as executioner to a corrupt local politician who is framing innocent men sending them to hang in an evil scheme to take hold of their land. But Django has other ideas and cleverly faking the deaths of the condemned men he assembles them into a loyal gang who'll help him take down the boss a man who had a hand in the death of Django's wife years before. Thrill as Django gets his bloody revenge with a hail of bullets in this classic from a series of B-movie western that helped to define a genre. Prepare your coffin now! Special Features: New High Definition digital transfer of the film in the original 1.66:1 aspect ratio Optional English and Italian audio tracks Newly translated English subtitles for Italian audio and English SDH for the deaf and hard of hearing on the English audio Django Explained - A new interview with Spaghetti Western expert and author Kevin Grant Original Trailer Collector's booklet by critic and spaghetti western expert Howard Hughes

• Dances With Wolves | DVD | (12/10/2009) from £3.44  |  Saving you £6.00 (60.10%)  |  RRP £9.99