Hud

Absolutely top-notch anti-Western, one of the few to truly deconstruct the archetypes and tropes of the genre decades before those deconstructions became commonplace. There's a trio of terrific performances at the core of the film. Newman and Neal are great, though I'm particularly drawn to Brandon De Wilde, also great a decade earlier in "Shane". His is one of the less showy performances here since his character is mostly trying to figure out his own sense of identity in the shadow of the other characters, but it's all the better for it. It's heartbreaking to know the actor died at just 30 in a car accident; we'll never know exactly how great his career might have been. As a side note, Walker and De Wilde have a very interesting chemistry in the film. I did some digging after watching, and there are rumours that the two were involved for a while during the early years of Newman's relationship to Joanne Woodward. Whether that's true we'll likely never know, but it would explain that extra something their scenes together seem to have.