Film

First Cow

Name: First Cow
Genre: Drama, Western
Released: 2020
Cast: John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, Scott Shepherd

First Cow is Kelly Reichardt's hushed, unhurried Western about two drifters who build a small, tender scheme for survival: stealing milk from the territory's only cow to fry into cakes and sell. It trades gunfights for skillets, and the quiet dread of being caught becomes its real tension. Patient, plain-spoken, and quietly devastating — for viewers who want frontier stories told intimately, not epically.

TMDb rating

7.0

If you liked this

Meek's Cutoff2011

Reichardt's earlier Oregon Trail Western shares First Cow's patience and dread — settlers lost, resources dwindling, trust fraying under an unforgiving sky. Same director, same landscape, same eye for what survival strips people down to.

But It's even slower and more withholding than First Cow, with almost no plot momentum to hold onto.

Old Joy2006no page yet

Reichardt's breakout is a tiny, aching film about two old friends on a weekend hike, watching a bond quietly fray. Same tenderness and restraint, same sense that friendship itself is the plot.

But Barely 76 minutes and almost nothing happens on the surface — it demands patience for very little incident.

Brokeback Mountain2005

Two men, an unforgiving landscape, and an intimacy neither can fully name or protect — the tenderness at First Cow's center gets a bigger, more heartbreaking canvas here.

But It's a more conventionally dramatic film with a much heavier emotional gut-punch than First Cow ever aims for.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Rififi1955

First Cow is a heist movie in disguise — two men plotting to take something that isn't theirs, again and again, hoping this time they don't get caught. Rififi is the genre's founding text, showing the mechanics and dread of theft that First Cow borrows and softens.

The heist that invented the modern heist film: a meticulous, near-silent twenty-minute robbery sequence that still teaches directors how to build tension shot by shot.

But It's a straight noir thriller with none of First Cow's warmth — cold, fatalistic, and considerably more violent.

Nomadland2021

Frances McDormand drifts through modern America's gig economy, finding dignity and community on the margins — the same quiet attention to people the system has no use for.

But It swaps 1820s Oregon for RV parks and warehouses, so if you wanted more frontier atmosphere, this won't scratch that itch.

Lean on Pete2018

A teenage boy and a failing racehorse form a bond built on necessity as much as love, wandering through an America that keeps grinding people down. Same tenderness, same desperation underneath.

But It's considerably harsher and sadder in its back half than First Cow, with less warmth to cushion the blow.

Days of Heaven1978

Malick's frontier tale is gorgeously shot, slow, and melancholy, built on outsiders trying to carve out a life on land that was never really theirs to have.

But It's more painterly and abstract than narrative — mood and light take over even more than in First Cow.

There Will Be Blood2007

The same frontier, the same hunger for a foothold in a new economy — but here greed wins outright, curdling into something monstrous. A harsher mirror to First Cow's gentleness.

But It's a much louder, angrier film at a completely different temperature — brutal where First Cow is soft.

Certain Women2016

Another Reichardt triptych of quiet lives in the American West, full of small gestures and unspoken longing. If you loved her patience in First Cow, this rewards it again.

But Three loosely connected stories rather than one, so you lose the single steady friendship that anchors First Cow.

The Rider2018

A real-life rodeo rider plays a version of himself, rebuilding a sense of purpose after injury — the same non-actor authenticity and tenderness toward people the modern West has discarded.

But It's set in the present day among actual cowboys, so the period texture and outsider scheme at First Cow's heart is gone.

City Lights1931

Same premise wearing completely different clothes: an outsider improvising dignity and survival through a small, illicit scheme of care. City Lights gets there through pratfalls instead of hushed naturalism, but the ache underneath is the same.

Chaplin's Tramp hustles, schemes, and quietly cares for someone he can't really afford to help — slapstick comedy that turns out to have real tenderness at its core.

But It's silent, broadly comic, and nearly a century old — a big tonal leap if you came to First Cow for realism.

Sweetgrass2009

First Cow's texture — the sound of hooves, the weight of livestock as both livelihood and burden — is drawn from real frontier labor. Sweetgrass shows that labor unfiltered, the documentary truth behind the fiction's careful recreation.

A documentary following the last herders driving sheep through Montana's mountains — no narration, no music, just labor, animals, and land captured with startling patience.

But There's no story in the conventional sense, just observed life — even slower and more plotless than First Cow.