A Gritty 2023 Western With A 94% Rotten Tomatoes Score Will Leave You Speechless

The Western movie genre may have originated in the United States, but over the years, a number of different countries have put their stamp on tales of lawless times where people braved the wilderness in search of a new beginning. Some, like many of the "Spaghetti Westerns" out of Italy, are actually set in the American west but were filmed in Europe, while others, like the brutal Australian film "The Proposition," use their filming locations to their advantage to tell unique stories from their own local histories

In the critically acclaimed 2023 Chilean Western "The Settlers," a trio of men are tasked with securing the property of a wealthy Spanish landowner in Chile around the turn of the 20th century. While Scottish military veteran Alexander MacLennan (Mark Stanley), U.S. mercenary Bill (Benjamin Westfall), and mestizo marksman Segundo (Camilo Arancibia) initially think it's a matter of dealing with thieves and wildlife, it turns out they're really part of an expedition to murder as many of the Indigenous people in the area as possible. On top of holding an impressive 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes, "The Settlers" has been praised for being an important story about the dark history of colonization, as well as a killer Western film in general. Indeed, it's a pretty dang fascinating example of what can happen when countries outside of the U.S. adapt the genre's format.

Critics celebrated "The Settlers" upon its initial release, pointing to the film's gritty realism and willingness to shed light on the brutality of colonialism. As the reviews note, first-time feature director Felipe Gálvez Haberle's influences clearly range from Sam Peckinpah to Sergio Leone, though this particular revisionist Western also shares DNA with the work of more contemporary filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino. It's not an easy story, and none of the movie's leads are heroes by any traditional measure, but cinematographer Simone D'Arcangelo's gorgeous camerawork brings some beauty to the brutality, making it a bit more watchable.

In the past decade or so, we've seen a trend towards revisionist Westerns that not only contend with the bitter violence of their period setting but actually try to show the atrocities committed against Indigenous people. These movies and TV shows aren't always the easiest thing to watch due to the sheer level of misery visited upon innocents, but it's important to remember all of history — not just the fast-draw shoot-outs and rootin'-tootin' cowboys of more traditional Western fare. "The Settlers" occupies the same realm as Martin Scorsese's fact-based "Killers of the Flower Moon" and the excellent Prime Video miniseries "The English," serving to remind us that the West wasn't really won at all; it was stolen.

"The Settlers" is currently available to stream on MUBI.