Quentin Tarantino Defended This 90s Western Everyone Else Hated
Quentin Tarantino has never shied away from an unpopular opinion, but one of his most unexpected takes is still catching people off guard.
Turns out, he's a big defender of the 1993 Western Geronimo: An American Legend — a movie most people either forgot or trashed.
In a 2003 interview with The Buffalo News, while promoting Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Tarantino was asked if there were any mainstream American directors people weren't taking seriously enough. His answer? Walter Hill.
Tarantino's full quote:
"A mainstream director who had his day as far as recognition but I think has been ignored lately and doesn't deserve it is Walter Hill. I think in the last 10 years he's had a big resurgence in creativity. I think he lost his way for a while in the '80s."
One film in particular stuck with Tarantino long enough to actually praise it:
"I thought with Geronimo Hill went to a really fantastic place. Everybody talked about how boring it was. But I didn't. I thought he made a really great classic Western and America just wasn't worthy of the privilege."
Geronimo: An American Legend was supposed to be a prestige film — an epic telling of the Apache Wars and the lead-up to Geronimo's surrender in 1886. Westerns were back in fashion after Dances with Wolves and Unforgiven cleaned up at the Oscars, so Hill's film looked like a smart bet.
The production had plenty going for it:
- Directed by: Walter Hill
- Starring: Wes Studi (as Geronimo), Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Jason Patric, and a young Matt Damon
- Box Office: $18.6 million worldwide
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 50%
Despite the cast and genre buzz, critics were mostly lukewarm. Audiences shrugged. And the movie quietly flopped. But Tarantino wasn't having any of the "boring" complaints — he saw it as a classic Western made by a master, just one the public didn't deserve.
Tarantino's praise didn't stop there. He also went to bat for Walter Hill's Wild Bill from 1995 — another Western, starring Jeff Bridges, that critics mostly wrote off. Today it holds a 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, just a notch below Geronimo.
Hill's no stranger to cult appreciation. Though he never bounced back commercially, his later work still has its champions — like the 2002 prison boxing movie Undisputed and more recently 2022's Dead for a Dollar, with Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, and Rachel Brosnahan. Hill's still directing at 83.