SHANE (1953) Maybe the best Western of all time

SHANE is a gun-toting stranger with a mysterious past and no future, walking in the footprints of a long line of noir men – only in this case, he walks in boots. Alan Ladd, who portrays him magnificently, was no stranger to noir films, nor were other members of the cast, including Van Heflin and Elisha Cook. This is a rip-roaring good shoot-'em-up about a war between sod-busters and cattlemen, but it's also a tender tale of friendship, love and sacrifice, set in the most beautiful, Wyoming scenery you'll ever see on the silver screen and worth seeing again and again. It also contains many of the elements that make good noir, including a doomed anti-hero. (Does Shane die in the end? We never find out.)