Film

The Outlaw

Name: The Outlaw
Genre: Western, Drama
Released: 1943
Cast: Jack Buetel, Jane Russell, Thomas Mitchell, Walter Huston, Mimi Aguglia

Howard Hughes's notorious 1943 western, famous for Jane Russell's cleavage and years of legal battles over obscenity. A love triangle between Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday and a rancher's daughter, shot in lush Technicolor and simmering with sexual tension. Strange, uneven, utterly fascinating as both film and historical artifact.

TMDb rating

2.7

If you liked this

Johnny Guitar1954

A western where sexual desire and power—not gunplay—drive the plot. Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge's rivalry burns hotter than any shootout. Visually audacious, thematically daring, and just as unconventional as The Outlaw.

But The pacing is slow and deliberately artificial. Some find the emotional intensity exhausting rather than gripping.

Duel in the Sun1946

Another Selznick-adjacent melodrama with a woman caught between two men, scored to operatic intensity. Pearl Chavez's agency and desire are the story. Technicolor spectacle meets genuine moral complexity about love and loyalty.

But At nearly three hours, it's indulgent and overwrought. The narrative can feel soap-opera thin if you're not invested in pure emotion.

Rio Bravo1959

Hawks's response to High Noon reframes the western around friendship and masculine vulnerability. Duke and Dean Martin drift through the plot with ease, but the real tension comes from loyalty tested. A corrective to the lone-wolf mythology.

But It's deliberately paced and low-stakes compared to typical westerns. If you want action, this will feel like a hangout movie in a saloon.

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The Ballad of Little Jo1993

Both films position female desire and agency as dangerous to the masculine order of the West, making sexuality the real outlaw.

A woman passes as a man to survive in the Old West, building a life on deception and desire. Maggie Greenwald's film is formally restrained but emotionally complex. It reclaims the western as a space where gender and sexuality are fluid, not fixed—making The Outlaw's sexual chaos feel less anomalous and more prophetic.

But The pacing is quiet and introspective. Suzy Amis's performance is subdued, and there's no narrative sweep or grand moments.

The Left Handed Gun1958

Paul Newman's Billy the Kid is raw and neurotic, obsessed with avenging a father figure's death. Arthur Penn directs with psychological intensity. It treats the myth as tragedy, not legend, and Newman's performance is mesmerizing.

But Deliberately bleak and introspective, with a protagonist who is genuinely unsettling. The black-and-white TV-movie feel won't appeal to those wanting spectacle.

Rancho Notorious1952

Fritz Lang's neurotic western about a man driven by obsession and lust. Marlene Dietrich runs an outlaw haven; the moral architecture is perverse and baroque. Lang finds the darkness in desire that Hollywood usually prettifies.

But The plotting is convoluted and the tone careens between noir and pulp. Some scenes feel stagey and artificial in a way that doesn't quite land.

Vera Cruz1954

Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper as morally compromised mercenaries in Mexico. Cynical, sexually charged, visually stunning in Technicolor. The friendship between two bad men being tested mirrors the Doc-Billy dynamic perfectly.

But The plot is genuinely slight beneath the spectacle. It's a vehicle for two stars to smolder and posture rather than a story with much depth.

The Man from Laramie1955

Mann and Stewart create a western about father-son conflict and male pride. The camera work is extraordinary; Stewart's rage is frightening and intimate. It's baroque in the same way The Outlaw is, but controlled and devastating.

But It's emotionally exhausting and claustrophobic. The villains are not charming, and there's no comfort in watching good men destroy each other.

The Gunfighter1950

Gregory Peck as an aging gunslinger desperate to retire, hunted by younger men. It deconstructs the western myth with grace and melancholy. The violence is brief and consequential, not glorified.

But The pace is deliberately elegiac. If you want a rousing adventure, this meditative tragedy will feel slow and sad.

Bend of the River1952

Mann and Anthony Mann's James Stewart as a reformed outlaw trying to prove himself. Lush Technicolor, moral ambiguity, friendships tested by circumstance. A solid, well-made exploration of redemption and loyalty.

But It's conventional in ways The Outlaw deliberately isn't. The narrative is satisfying but not strange or provocative.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller1971

Like The Outlaw, it treats the western frontier as a space where sexual and economic transactions are inseparable, and neither party is innocent.

Altman's revisionist western is about business and sex, not gunplay. Julie Christie and Warren Beatty navigate a frontier town where capitalism and desire entangle them. Shot in soft focus through cigarette smoke, it's beautiful and elegiac. The west is not won—it's compromised.

But It's deliberate, unglamorous, and permeated with loss. If you want heroic myth-making, Altman will disappoint you utterly.

Nashville1975

Both films are fascinated by the machinery of stardom and the way desire and fame distort human relationships. Both prioritize spectacle and sexuality over plot. Both are messy, excessive, and difficult to forget.

Not a western at all, but Altman's three-hour ensemble about power, desire, and performance in American myth-making. Twenty-four intersecting lives in Music City, shot with the same overlapping dialogue and anarchic energy Hughes brought to cinema. It's a corrective to the idea of the unified American hero—there is only chaos and spectacle.

But It's deliberately shapeless. You cannot follow every thread, and Altman refuses to help. If you need narrative coherence and a protagonist, this will frustrate you.