12 Underrated Robert Duvall Movies to Watch Over and Over

The world lost one of its best actors this week in Robert Duvall, leading fans and longtime collaborators like Francis Ford Coppola to share clips and memories of the singular talent. A performer who grounded every film in which he appeared, Duvall began acting on the stage in the 1950s before breaking into film with an unforgettable turn as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962, so we thought we would round up a few of his most undersung performances. None of his seven Oscar nominations (he only won once, for Tender Mercies) is on the list below, and you probably already know his biggest credits, like The Godfather, Network, and Apocalypse Now. This week, hit PLAY on one of his turns that didn’t get the attention of “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Note: All of these are available on VOD along with the streaming service listed.

One of Duvall’s first impactful theatrical roles after To Kill a Mockingbird came just a few years later in this riveting prison-break film from the legendary Arthur Penn (who would change cinema only a year later with Bonnie and Clyde). Duvall stars alongside Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Angie Dickinson, E.G. Marshall, and Marlon Brando. Duvall is a highlight of the film, which is about small-town tension and corruption more than it is just a standard prison movie, and it foreshadowed many roles for him in the ’60s and ’70s in which he would play old-fashioned men struggling through a new world.

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The people who really know Duvall often cite this drama as one of their favorite performances from the legendary star. The legacy behind it is stunning. It’s based on a short story by William Faulkner, adapted by Horton Foote, the celebrated playwright who would later write Tender Mercies for Duvall and originally recommended him for the Boo Radley role. This time, Duvall plays a farmer named Fentry, who lives deep in isolation in Mississippi. He takes in a pregnant drifter, to whom he becomes emotionally attached. His path crosses many years later with the drifter’s child in a story of acceptance that Duvall considered one of his best films.

On Shout! TV and Kanopy

So many of the legends of ’70s dramatic cinema worked with Robert Duvall that it’s easy to forget that he also collaborated with one of the best action filmmakers of all time, Sam Peckinpah. An adaptation of the novel Monkey in the Middle, this reunites Sonny Corleone and Tom Hagen as Duvall butts heads with James Caan as a pair of mercenaries in San Francisco who end up on either side of a proxy war over a foreign dignitary. It’s a silly movie — reportedly one of the first American ones to include ninjas — that some disdained as Peckinpah selling out for easy box office. Yet others, including Pauline Kael, saw it as a self-aware satire of a genre the director helped create.

On Prime Video

Maybe working with Peckinpah inspired Duvall to seek out more action legends, because he collaborated with none other than The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape director John Sturges for this bananas British war film that co-stars Michael Caine and Donald Sutherland. Beloved as a cult classic, Sturges’s final movie details a fictional plot to kidnap Winston Churchill in the middle of World War II. Duvall plays the head of Operation Eagle, given the assignment by none other than Heinrich Himmler himself.

On Prime Video

Duvall reunited with his The Godfather Part II co-star Robert De Niro for this acclaimed adaptation of John Gregory Dunne’s novel of the same name, which the writer adapted with his wife, Joan Didion. De Niro plays a reverend in Los Angeles; Duvall is his homicide-detective brother. When a woman is found murdered, her body mutilated in a way that loosely connects the crime to the true story of the Black Dahlia, an investigation begins that intertwines the two. The New York Times said that it’s “a reminder of just how good commercial American movies can be when the right people come together.” Duvall was almost always the right person.

On MGM+

Martha Coolidge’s adaptation of Calder Willingham’s novel of the same name is a lot of things: a Great Depression drama, a coming-of-age story, an acting showcase. In the latter category, it earned a place in Oscar-trivia history by becoming the first film for which a mother-daughter duo, Diane Ladd and Laura Dern, were nominated for Academy Awards. They’re both transcendently great in this film, but the whole thing collapses without the support beam that is Duvall’s performance as the family patriarch, who takes in Dern’s prostitute character. This film serves as one of the best examples of his ability to sketch men who felt believably decent at their core.

On Kanopy and Hoopla

One of the most underrated films about the profession of journalism (which feels pretty timely in 2026, given how much it’s under attack), this Ron Howard dramedy is a great example of how well Duvall knew how to fit into an ensemble instead of stealing the focus for himself. He was a consummate “supporting” actor, doing exactly what was needed to uplift a film that also stars Michael Keaton, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, and Robert Duvall. This study of 24 hours in a fictional New York newspaper office feels a bit dated, but Duvall’s work in it, in which he plays the paper’s world-weary editor-in-chief, remains timeless.

On VOD only

With the possible exception of Tomorrow, this might be the film on the list that Duvall himself would most want you to seek out in his honor. A passion project for an actor who also loved to dance and particularly adored the tango, Duvall wrote, produced, directed, and starred in this with his real-life wife, Luciana Pedraza. (It also happens to have been executive-produced by his buddy Francis Ford Coppola.) Duvall plays a hitman who falls in love with an Argentinian woman while on a job in the country.

On Prime Video and MGM+

One of the most underrated Westerns of all time, this Kevin Costner film is an old-fashioned oater that uses Duvall’s age at the time perfectly. We believe his character, Boss Spearman, has lived a long but rewarding life in the late-19th century in the Montana territory. He’s a cattleman with a team of men who get caught moving his herd through land owned by a vicious cattle baron played by Michael Gambon, kick-starting a violent range war. Co-stars include Costner, Annette Bening, and the late Michael Jeter.

On AMC+ and YouTubeTV

Duvall worked with interesting filmmakers from his early days all the way to the end, and he was a perfect fit for James Gray’s visions of troubled men, a style that owes a debt to the ’70s filmmakers, like Coppola, whom the Oscar winner helped define. Gray’s third film stars Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, while Duvall plays their father. Phoenix’s Bobby is the black sheep of the family to Wahlberg’s cop and Duvall’s NYPD deputy chief.

On Fubo

By the time Duvall made this film, he was deep in his 70s and starting to use his age more as a tool in his character work. He plays Felix Bush like the crotchety old man that the story requires, about a hermit who decides to throw himself a funeral while he’s still alive. Co-starring Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek, and Lucas Black, it’s a pretty silly movie, but Duvall makes so many smart choices and gives it so much life throughout that its heartstring-pulling manipulations can be forgiven.

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It wasn’t his last role (those came in 2022’s The Pale Blue Eye and Hustle), but it’s his last great movie, an underrated thriller with one of the best ensembles of the 2010s and razor-sharp direction from Steve McQueen. Duvall plays the patriarch of a family of lifelong Chicago politicians, a figure whom anyone from the Windy City can feel the accuracy of in their bones. The way he pressures and mocks his son Jack into doing whatever it takes to win is essential to the fabric of this truly excellent film.

On VOD only