The western is America's definitive contribution to cinema, a bullet-spattered blueprint for the nation's image of itself and its place in the world. To watch a western is to witness the birth of a nation, overseen by square-jawed sheriffs and steel-nerved gunfighters, armed with six-guns and a clear moral vision. Their victories against outlaws and Indians were proof that might was right - so long as it was in the correct hands. Renegade Westerns shows the shadowy side of this picture, where heroes behaved like villains, where Indians were not always the savages we'd been led to expect.
