Strips away a lot of the steely gazes and taciturn men from Hill's first few pictures and gives us richly detailed interpersonal dynamics in the James-Younger gang and the men and women circling around them.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Sep 29, 2023

The Long Riders is exceptionally well made, but I came out feeling that there was no pressing reason to make it at all.

| Nov 3, 2021

The Long Riders sounds like merely a gimmick -- cast real-life brothers as real-life outlaw siblings -- but it turned out to be one of the last decent Westerns to hit the big screen until the early 1990s brought us Dances with Wolves and Unforgiven.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 3, 2021

This languidly fatalistic rendering of the oft lionized bank robbers is one of the few revisionist westerns to equal the gritty poetry of Hill's predecessor Sam Peckinpah.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 31, 2020

The cinematography is perfect, the folklore is wisely managed, and the music is excellent. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 13, 2019

The Long Riders isn't quite sure which way it wants to ride, but the action scenes and cinematography make up for any misdirection.

| Original Score: 7/10 | May 4, 2012

Hill is very much in the American grain, the inheritor of the Ford-Hawks-Walsh tradition of artful, understated action film making.

| Oct 7, 2011

Hill's lean, mean approach never had a more appealing texture than it does here...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 1, 2011

A Western Nirvana

| Feb 14, 2010

The casting problems aside, this is a fairly solid, but not particularly extraordinary film.

| Jun 27, 2008

One of the more idiosyncratic James gang westerns but not necessarily one of the better ones.

| Original Score: C+ | Apr 2, 2008

Sacrificing investigations into the mentality behind America's most feared band of outlaws, Hill plumps for an evocation of time and place. He does a magnificent job.

| Feb 5, 2008

Walter Hill's first outright failure.

| Feb 5, 2008

A superb, nitty-gritty retelling of the story of the James-Younger gang.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 5, 2008

What's ultimately missing is a definable point of view which would tie together the myriad events on display and fill in the blanks which Hill has imposed on the action by sapping it of emotional or historical meaning.

| Feb 5, 2008

A beautiful, laconic and unsentimental film.

| Feb 9, 2006

Walter Hill's first Western is atmospheric and remarkably authentic by casting real-life thespian brothers as real-life outlaw brothers.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 21, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 19, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 4, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 25, 2004