On the run after committing murder, an accountant encounters a strange Native American man who prepares him for his journey into the spiritual world.
A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a disabled man, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy.
When his cattlemen abandon him for the gold fields, rancher Wil Andersen is forced to take on a collection of young boys as his cowboys in order to get his herd to market in time to avoid financial disaster. The boys learn to do a man's job under Andersen's tutelage, however, neither he nor the boys know that a gang of cattle thieves is stalking them.
In 1870s America, a peaceful American settler kills his family's murderer which unleashes the fury of a notorious gang leader. His cowardly fellow townspeople then betray him, forcing him to hunt down the outlaws alone.
The players in an ongoing poker game are being mysteriously killed off, one by one.
After arriving at his new, remote Army outpost, Capt. John Boyd and his regiment aid a wounded frontiersman who recounts a horrifying tale of a wagon train murdered by its supposed guide – a vicious U.S. Army colonel gone rogue. Fearing the worst, the regiment heads out into the wilderness to verify the gruesome claims.
The Man With No Name enters the Mexican village of San Miguel in the midst of a power struggle among the three Rojo brothers and sheriff John Baxter. When a regiment of Mexican soldiers bearing gold intended to pay for new weapons is waylaid by the Rojo brothers, the stranger inserts himself into the middle of the long-simmering battle, selling false information to both sides for his own benefit.
Shortly after Moody Pierson saves Sheriff Tim's life, Moody is arrested for murder. Tim doesn't believe he did it and lets him get away. Kicked out as Sheriff, Tim goes after the real kiler and this leads him to the town controlled by Red Slavins.
One-armed war veteran John J. Macreedy steps off a train at the sleepy little town of Black Rock. Once there, he begins to unravel a web of lies, secrecy, and murder.
A weathered Sheriff returns to the remains of an accident he has spent a lifetime trying to forget. With each step forward, the memories come flooding back. Faced with his mistake once again, he must find the strength to carry on.
When he thinks his brother has let him down, a cowboy goes bad.
Bank robbers and killers cause mayhem in a small western town.
Cattlemen use Alamo Pass in order to get their cattle to market. A gang has taken it over and charges a toll to go through it. When one rancher doesn't have enough money to pay the toll, he winds up dead. A local rancher, Bill Bowers, investigates the killing, but his neighbor and rival Molly Spellman decides to take her cattle around the pass instead of through it to avoid the toll. The gangsters kidnap her, and Bill gathers the other ranchers in the area for a final showdown with the gang.
A cattleman's association hires a range detective to track down and capture a notorious rustler known as El Lobo.
When a Chinese rebel murders Chon's estranged father and escapes to England, Chon and Roy make their way to London with revenge on their minds.
A weary gunfighter attempts to settle down with a homestead family, but a smouldering settler and rancher conflict forces him to act.
With a heavy haul of 250 kilograms of gold bullion, the grizzled criminal mastermind, Rhino, and his ruthless gang of cutthroats, head to a ramshackle retreat somewhere in the Mediterranean to lay low on a scorching day of July. However, the unexpected and rather unwelcome arrival of the bohemian writer, Bernier, his muse, Luce, along with a pair of no-joke gendarmes further complicates things, as the frail allegiances will soon be put to the test.
CREMASTER 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney's abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1.
Lightning Carson's nephew has been falsely accused of murder. To get in with the gang, Lightning poses as a Mexican. He also appears as himself making his costume changes at his sister's ranch. Just as he about to bring in the gang, a henchman finds evidence of his masquerade and arrives to expose the hoax.
Ben Jason has found a lost gold mine. When Morgan learns this, he and his henchman chase down Jason and kill him. Banning and sidekick Rafferty arrive on the scene only to be arrested and jailed for the murder. They escape from jail and now have to find the real killers to clear their name.