Today I want to do something a little different. I was playing the old NES / Famicon gave Ninja Gaiden with my son. For those who don't know or don't remember, the game begins with a ninja showdown. It's done somewhat in the style of a Kurosawa samurai showdown, but the main characters in this game are ninja, so ninja showdown it is.

But anyway, my son asked me about it and commented that he sees similar battles in his anime shows all the time. I can easily understand that. It has become a pretty common motif.

But then, as I do, I started to think of the origin of that motif. Kurosawa created it, of course, but it didn't come from nowhere. Kurosawa's favorite movies were Westerns. He was influenced by many directors, but John Ford may have been his biggest influence. Yes, this is why Kurosawa samurai films were so different from what had come before—because he basically turned them into Westerns with samurai instead of gunfighters.

(And then after Kurosawa revolutionized samurai films by borrowing from Westerns, Westerns in turn revolutionized themselves by borrowing back from Kurosawa. Well, actually the Italians revolutionized Westerns by borrowing from the Japanese. Funny how that worked. The borrowing didn't end there. The spaghetti Westerns continued to influence US Westerns and Japanese samurai dramas, both, especially the style of music, which started to show up in both places.)

That makes a huge influence on samurai showdowns the Western gunfighter showdown.

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It goes without saying that Eastwood's spaghetti Westerns would be at the top of my list. I'm sure almost everyone would pick the three-way showdown at the end of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (see it here). You know what? Me too! That is such an amazing scene, from the church when they find the dying Confederate all the way to the shootout where the tension just builds and builds and builds for several minutes before they actually shoot. But everyone picks that one, so for this list I'm going to defy expectations and go with the showdown at the end of For a Few Dollars More. I know, I know, that's not actually Eastwood, it's Lee Van Cleef! So sue me—it's a great showdown!

Some trivia: In his Bio, Eastwood lists For a Few Dollars More as his favorite of the trilogy, arguing it is more complex than the first and more tense than the second.

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Next I'm going to go with the showdown at the end of Silverado. Kevin Cline may not be exactly who you think of when you think cowboy, but he did a fine job in this film. This final showdown wasn't drawn out in the Sergio Leone style and was more to the point, but I think it was still well-down.

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And for my last, I'll go with this shootout from Once Upon a Time in the West. So sue me, I just can't get away from Sergio Leone. He was so good and building suspense that his shootouts and showdowns were the best on film.

What are some of your favorite Western showdowns?

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.

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