[KillerGremlin]

Star Wars is a western.

I won't delve into film study specifics, but here is some Wikipedia:

In the 1960s academic and critical attention to cinema as a legitimate art form emerged. With the increased attention, film theory was developed to attempt to understand the significance of film. From this environment emerged (in conjunction with the literary movement) an enclave of critical studies called genre studies. This was primarily a semantic and structuralist approach to understanding how similar films convey meaning.

Westerns usually have certain codes: for example, a hero wears a white hat, while the villain wears a black hat; when more than one cowboy faces the other with no one in between them, there will be a shootout; ranchers and mountain men don't talk to people and live alone, while townsfolk are family and community-minded; etc. All Western films can be read as a series of codes and the variations on those codes.

One of the results of genre studies is that some have argued that "Westerns" need not take place in the American West or even in the 19th century, as the codes can be found in other types of films. For example, a very typical Western plot is that an eastern lawman heads west, where he matches wits and trades bullets with a gang of outlaws and thugs, and is aided by a local lawman who is well-meaning but largely ineffective until a critical moment when he redeems himself by saving the hero's life. This description can be used to describe any number of Westerns, but also other films such as Die Hard, Top Gun, and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai which are frequently cited examples of films that do not take place in the American West but have many themes and characteristics common to Westerns. Likewise, films set in the American Old West may not necessarily be considered "Westerns."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western...#Genre_studies

I think I recall there being flares of "Western" in the Fifth Element as well.