Western

• Jeremiah Johnson | DVD | (06/06/2005) from £4.44  |  Saving you £9.55 (68.30%)  |  RRP £13.99

  After they first worked together on the 1966 film This Property Is Condemned, director Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford continued their long-lasting collaboration with this 1972 drama set during the mid-1800s, about one man's rugged effort to shed the burden of civilisation and learn to survive in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. Will Geer is perfectly cast as the seasoned trapper who teaches Jeremiah Johnson (Redford) how to survive against harsh winters, close encounters with grizzly bears, and hostile Crow Indians. In the course of his adventure, Johnson marries the daughter of a Flathead Indian chief, forms a makeshift family, and ultimately assumes a mythic place in Rocky Mountain folklore. Shot entirely on location in Utah, Jeremiah Johnson boasts an abundance of breathtaking widescreen scenery, and the story (despite a PG rating) doesn't flinch from the brutality of the wilderness. --Jeff Shannon

• A Fistful Of Dynamite | DVD | (21/07/2003) from £3.49  |  Saving you £8.13 (62.60%)  |  RRP £12.99

  On the run from the British government in Mexico Sean Mallory (Coburn) an IRA explosives expert is befriended by Juan Miranda (Steiger) the leader of a bandit family. Upon witnessing Mallory's skills with explosives Juan asks Sean to join his gang to raid the bank of Mesa Verde but before long he's caught up in the Mexican revolution!

• The Ox-Bow Incident | DVD | (02/08/2010) from £7.43  |  Saving you £8.56 (53.50%)  |  RRP £15.99

  Two drifters are passing through a Western town when news comes in that a local farmer has been murdered and his cattle stolen. The townspeople joined by the drifters form a posse to catch the perpetrators. They find three men in possession of the cattle and are determined to see justice done on the spot.

• Deadwood - Season 1 | DVD | (04/07/2005) from £12.95  |  Saving you £36.32 (72.70%)  |  RRP £49.99

  The remarkable first season of Deadwood represents one of those periodic, wholesale reinventions of the Western that is as different from, say, Lonesome Dove as that miniseries is from Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo or the latter is from Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur. In many ways, Deadwood embraces the Western's unambiguous morality during the cinema's silent era through the 1930s while also blazing trails through a post-NYPD Blue, post-The West Wing television age exalting dense and customized dialogue. On top of that, Deadwood has managed an original look and texture for a familiar genre: gritty, chaotic, and surging with both dark and hopeful energy. Yet the show's creator, erstwhile NYPD Blue head writer David Milch, never ridicules or condescends to his more grasping, futile characters or overstates the virtues of his heroic ones. Set in an ungoverned stretch of South Dakota soon after the 1876 Custer massacre, Deadwood concerns a lawless, evolving town attracting fortune-seekers, drifters, tyrants, and burned-out adventurers searching for a card game and a place to die. Others, particularly women trapped in prostitution, sundry do-gooders, and hangers-on have nowhere else to go. Into this pool of aspiration and nightmare arrive former Montana lawman Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and his friend Sol Starr (John Hawkes), determined to open a lucrative hardware business. Over time, their paths cross with a weary but still formidable Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) and his doting companion, the coarse angel Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert); an aristocratic, drug-addicted widow (Molly Parker) trying to salvage a gold mining claim; and a despondent hooker (Paula Malcomson) who cares, briefly, for an orphaned girl. Casting a giant shadow over all is a blood-soaked king, Gem Saloon owner Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), possibly the best, most complex, and mesmerizing villain seen on TV in years. Over 12 episodes, each of these characters, and many others, will forge alliances and feuds, cope with disasters (such as smallpox), and move--almost invisibly but inexorably--toward some semblance of order and common cause. Making it all worthwhile is Milch's masterful dialogue--often profane, sometimes courtly and civilized, never perfunctory--and the brilliant acting of the aforementioned performers plus Brad Dourif, Leon Rippy, Powers Boothe, and Kim Dickens. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (2012 re-pack) | DVD | (06/08/2012) from £3.65  |  Saving you £9.34 (71.90%)  |  RRP £12.99

  A senator, who became famous for killing a notorious outlaw, returns for the funeral of an old friend and tells the truth about his deed.

• Duel At Diablo | DVD | (01/03/2004) from £4.23  |  Saving you £8.76 (67.40%)  |  RRP £12.99

  Sidney Poitier and James Garner put in excellent performances as men on either side of the colour divide forced to fight side by side against the might of the Apache Indians...

• Tombstone | DVD | (13/04/2009) from £7.09  |  Saving you £5.99 (33.30%)  |  RRP £17.99

  This Western has become a modest cult favorite since its release in 1993, when the film was met with mixed reviews but the performances of Kurt Russell (as Wyatt Earp) and especially Val Kilmer, for his memorably eccentric performance as the dying gunslinger Doc Holliday, garnered high praise. The movie opens with Wyatt Earp trying to put his violent past behind him, living happily in Tombstone with his brothers and the woman (Dana Delany) who puts his soul at ease. But a murderous gang called the Cowboys has burst on the scene, and Earp can't keep his gun belt off any longer. The plot sounds routine, and in many ways it is, but Western buffs won't mind a bit thanks to a fine cast and some well-handled action on the part of Rambo director George P. Cosmatos, who has yet to make a better film than this. --Jeff Shannon

• The Professionals | DVD | (16/06/2003) from £4.39  |  Saving you £8.60 (66.20%)  |  RRP £12.99

  Director Richard Brooks' marvellous ode to friendship, loyalty and disillusionment The Professionals may not have the stylistic bravado or fatalistic doom of Sam Peckinpah's more famous The Wild Bunch, but Brooks' storytelling is simple and steady and just as insightful. The difference is that Brooks is a lot more optimistic. Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster are buddies who have drifted into oblivion after fighting together in the Mexican Revolution. Marvin, the principled loyalist and munitions expert, lost his wife and his heart. Lancaster, the dynamite expert and unprincipled adventurer, keeps losing his pants. They team up with wrangler Robert Ryan and archer Woody Strode to rescue the beguiling Claudia Cardinale, who has been kidnapped by their old revolutionary buddie Jack Palance. So it's back into bloody Mexico they go on a "mission of mercy" for railroad tycoon Ralph Bellamy, who's paying handsomely for the return of his wife. But nothing is what it seems in this exciting, existential adventure, which was beautifully shot by Conrad Hall. Sarcastic quips, philosophical musings and heart-rending reversals underlie Brooks' humanistic sentiments. These are tired, world-weary men who somehow find the strength and the will to pull together for the sake of love and commitment. Through it all, Brooks seems to be lamenting a decline in professionalism much deeper than his story. He's decrying Hollywood and the society at large, anticipating Peckinpah's later strategy. --Bill Desowitz

• The Missing | DVD | (14/01/2008) from £3.50  |  Saving you £6.49 (65.00%)  |  RRP £9.99

  In 19th-century New Mexico Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones) returns home hoping to reconcile with his now adult daughter Maggie (Cate Blanchett). When Maggie's daughter is kidnapped father and estranged daughter are forced to put their troubled past behind them and work together to get her back...

• Eagle's Wing | DVD | (11/04/2011) from £5.87  |  Saving you £7.12 (54.80%)  |  RRP £12.99

  A white trapper steals a white mustang called Eagle Wing from a Kiowa Indian who pursues him to get his horse back.

• Cahill: United States Marshal | DVD | (06/06/2005) from £2.88  |  Saving you £10.11 (77.80%)  |  RRP £12.99

  Lawman J.D. Cahill can stand alone against an army of bad guys. But as a widower father he's on insecure footing raising two sons; particularly when he suspects his boys have stepped outside the law...

• Rooster Cogburn | Blu Ray | (06/05/2013) from £9.83  |  Saving you £4.74 (31.60%)  |  RRP £14.99

  An elderly marshal after a gang of outlaws is helped by a Bible-thumping schoolmarm the daughter of a priest. She joins up with the hard-drinking hard-fighting one-eyed marshal to capture the gang of incompetent outlaws who killed her father.

• Texas | DVD | (05/09/2011) from £4.49  |  Saving you £5.50 (55.10%)  |  RRP £9.99

  In this rip-roaring blend of action, thrills and humour, William Holden (The Man From Colorado) and Glenn Ford (The Desperadoes, The Violent Men) star as Dan Thomas and Tod Ramsey, two saddle bums whose dream of making their fortune in the Lone Star state has gone seriously awry. So when the rough-and-tumble drifters witness a stagecoach holdup, they decide to rob the robbers and go their separate ways. By the time they meet again, however, the two friends discover that they're not only in love with the same woman (Claire Trevor, The Stranger Wore A Gun), but on opposite sides of the law as well.

• Westerns Collection | Blu Ray | (17/09/2012) from £16.95  |  Saving you £18.04 (51.60%)  |  RRP £34.99

• El Topo | DVD | (28/01/2013) from £5.29  |  Saving you £7.70 (59.30%)  |  RRP £12.99

  Cult western fantasy. Gunslinger El Topo (Alexandro Jodorowsky who also directs and provides the script) travels the desert with his seven-year-old son. When they come across the scene of a massacre one of the dying victims tells them that the gang responsible is led by a man known as the Colonel. El Topo sets out to exact vengeance liberating the Colonel's wife in the process. She then challenges El Topo to prove his mettle by taking on the four masters of the desert.

• Major Dundee | DVD | (02/06/2008) from £4.66  |  Saving you £8.33 (64.10%)  |  RRP £12.99

  Major Dundee was Sam Peckinpah's first big-budget film and was also the first to be taken away and released in a shortened version. But now 40 years later most of the missing footage has been located and reinserted with the entire soundtrack remixed in 5.1 Dolby Digital and a completely new score composed. The new scenes complete the electrifying depiction of an oppressive Union officer who leads a squad of Rebel prisoners ex-slaves and criminals into Mexico to hunt down a band of murdering Apaches which raises the question: who represents a greater threat?

• True Grit | Blu Ray | (12/09/2011) from £8.99  |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)  |  RRP £N/A

  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.

• Big Jake | DVD | (06/06/2005) from £3.50  |  Saving you £9.49 (73.10%)  |  RRP £12.99

  Big Jake is not one of the Duke's classics, but it's a diverting picture nonetheless. Everyone seems to think that Jacob McCandles is six-feet under ("I thought you was dead" is a running line throughout), so some bad men kidnap his grandson. They want a piece of the family fortune and will kill to get it. Patrick Wayne, the Duke's own son, plays one of Big Jake's kids, and together they start out after the boy's abductors. Richard Boone makes a worthy adversary to Jake's larger-than-life figure, and the final confrontation between the two contains some great gritted-teeth dialogue. Maureen O'Hara is barely in the feature, sharing the same fate as Bobby Vinton as the boy's father, who seems to be onscreen just to get shot. --Keith Simanton

• The Outlaw | DVD | (07/09/2009) from £N/A  |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)  |  RRP £7.99

  The Outlaw

• Lonely Are the Brave | DVD | (21/01/2013) from £8.99  |  Saving you £4.00 (30.80%)  |  RRP £12.99