The 'Marshals' Cast Reveals Their Characters' Classic Movie Picks | Sorry Not Sorry
There's been a resurgence of Western storytelling on television in the past few years. These shows may not embrace the traditional cowboy mythos entirely. But they still feature lawmen in wide-open spaces and people making moral decisions that impact others. When the cast of Marshals shared the movies their characters would enjoy, they didn't stray too far from that same essence.
WATCH: Marshals Cast Picks Which Classic Movies Their Characters Would Watch!
Speaking to JustWatch while promoting the CBS series (which is also streaming on Prime Video), Luke Grimes picked a film that defined revisionist Western storytelling for his character. "I'd say Unforgiven for Kayce," the actor said about his choice for the former US Navy SEAL turned Special Deputy U.S. Marshal who is grieving the death of his wife while raising his son.
"There's a lot of parallels in that storyline," Grimes added. Ash Santos chose something a little more intense for Deputy U.S. Marshal Andrea Cruz. "I feel like Cruz would have loved Heat," Santos said. "She just would have loved Robert De Niro and Al Pacino going at it in that film." Brecken Merrill, who plays Kayce's son, Tate, picked arguably the most hardcore movie of the bunch.
"Probably Fight Club," he said. "I don't really know the reasoning, just 'cause it's a good movie, you know. It's one of my favorites." Arielle Kebbel selected The Man From Snowy River for Deputy U.S. Marshal Isabel Skinner-Turek. "There is this epic scene in this movie where he's like scaling a mountain with his horse," she said about the movie. "It was a moment, and I was like, 'Oh my God!'"
The Myth-Making Masculinity Archetypes
Even though the cast isn't consciously connecting them, the films they reference all exist inside a very specific cultural lane. Each story is built around masculinity that is tested, broken down, and reconstructed. In the 1992 movie Unforgiven, William Munny (Clint Eastwood) isn't a hero in the traditional sense. He's a man trying to reconcile who he was with who he's trying to become.
Unlike most Westerns, the film examines the consequences of violence instead of romanticizing it. And the concept of legacy and being defined by what you've already done, even when you've moved past it, is very close to Kayce Dutton's world in Marshals. The 1995 crime drama, Heat, operates on a different but related axis.
Robert De Niro's Neil McCauley lives by a code, and so does Al Pacino's Vincent Hanna, even if those codes happen to be on opposite sides of the law. What makes the story epic is the respect embedded in that opposition. That idea of men defined by the systems they commit to (even when those systems isolate them) is a throughline in a show like Marshals.
Fight Club (1999) pushes that idea into more unstable territory. In this film, Edward Norton's character is suffering from a fractured sense of self. So the story splits his identity into competing versions, each one reacting to the pressures of life in extreme ways. That need to rebuild structure still fits within the broader framework of masculinity defined through confrontation, even if the confrontation is internal.
The Man from Snowy River (1982) brings the idea back to something more classical, where masculinity is proven through action. Jim Craig (Tom Burlinson) learns that the hard way when, after the death of his father, he is forced to prove his worth in the rough Australian high country. The characters in each of these movies fit the world of Marshals perfectly because they all operate under inherited baggage.
Why To Watch 'The Marshals' Cast's Movie Picks For Their Characters (And What To Watch After)
Unforgiven is a Western that deliberately resists the genre's usual sense of payoff. What makes it effective is how little it tries to justify its characters. Everything unresolved leaves you with something to think about. If that sounds like something you'd be into, 2007's No Country for Old Men feels like a natural extension of that same philosophy.
Heat is precise in a way most crime films aren't, since the drama comes from discipline rather than chaos. The dynamic between De Niro and Pacino is truly enjoyable to watch. Nothing is overstated, and that's what makes every interaction more meaningful. If stories about intensity and control sound appealing, Collateral (2004) is the next step.
Fight Club is disorienting on purpose. The story changes perspective and tone in a way that mirrors its identity and control themes. Its brilliance lies in how fully it commits to that instability. So 2010's Black Swan feels like a logical follow-up. The Man from Snowy River is more straightforward, but that clarity is part of its appeal. So Legends of the Fall (1994) would be a great movie to check out next.
