Doyle Brunson's Top Ten Westerns of All Time

Nolan Dalla describes himself as a “antitheist, socialist, humanist, skeptic, contrarian, free-thinker, gambler, evolutionist”, and his Twitter feed is pretty much nothing but Trump criticism. So it’s a little odd to see that he’s sat down with Doyle Brunson for a chat.

But the two old-farts avoid all that and in a lovely 30 minute interview at Todd Brunson’s restaurant: Roma Deli. Instead of worrying about what divides, they they stick to what unites them. Namely a love of classic Westerns.

Doyle gets pretty hard into spoilers for some of the movies so go in warned. 

The full list is:

• 1. Hell or High Water (2016)
• 2. Shane (1953)
• 3. Red River (1948)
• 4. Appaloosa (2008)
• 5. Hombre (1967)
• 6. Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
• 7. The Big Country (1958)
• 8. Unforgiven (1992)
• 9. The Searchers (1956)
• 10. The Professionals (1966)

The list is interesting to movie buffs and Doyle fans alike; but it does betray show a somewhat limited sense of what the Western can do.

There are those undeniable classics like The Searchers and Unforgiven, popular greats like Hombre and Shane, and even some as recent as 2016’s Hell or High Water. But you can look in vain for anything from the Spaghetti school, or the cynical revisionist Westerns that came out of Sam Peckinpah’s work.

What movies would make your list?