Russell Crowe's Best-Reviewed Movie in 27 Years Delivers a Top-10 Box Office Debut

With only a couple of major movies to his credit in the last decade or so, Russell Crowe has been busy starring in small-scale projects that have proven to be rather hit-or-miss. Some of them have exceeded box-office expectations, while others have found success on the home-video market. Several others have been lost in the ether. With the crime drama movie The Get Out currently topping the domestic Paramount+ leaderboard and the psychological thriller Unabomber slated for release on Netflix on September 25, this is turning out to be an eventful month for the Oscar-winning Crowe. What's making the month sweeter is the release of a new Western that also happens to be the best-reviewed movie Crowe has starred in since 1999.

Crowe has experience with the Western genre, which has been having something of a resurgence in the last two years. In 1995, Crowe played a memorable role in Sam Raimi's underrated revisionist Western The Quick and the Dead. Then, in 2007, he starred alongside Christian Bale in the acclaimed Western remake 3:10 to Yuma, directed by James Mangold. His co-star in the new Western is Ethan Hawke, who is no stranger to the genre either. Hawke starred alongside John Travolta in the little-seen movie In a Valley of Violence, directed by Ti West and released in 2016. He was also a part of the ensemble of Antoine Fuqua's The Magnificent Seven remake. In 2020, Hawke starred in the Showtime limited series The Good Lord and Bird.