Sam Elliott has called 'The Power of the Dog' a "piece of s***".

Sam Elliott slams The Power of the Dog

Sam Elliott slams The Power of the Dog

The 77-year-old actor - who is known for having starred in a string of Western films himself - was not impressed when he saw the Oscar-nominated Netflix drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a closeted ranch owner in the 1920s alongside Kodi Smit McPhee and Kirsten Dunst.

He said: "You wanna talk about that piece of s***. I didn't like it. This is is the guy who has done Westerns forever. It was the evisceration of the American West. Remember those guys from back in the day? They wear bow ties and not much else.[The Chippendales] That’s what all these f****** cowboys in that movie looked like. They’re running around in chaps and no shirts There’s all these allusions of homosexuality throughout the movie."

Sam then took aim at Benedict Cumberbatch, complaining that the 'Sherlock' star for "never getting out of his chaps" in the movie as he questioned "where the Western" was in the movie.

He said: "Where’s the Western in this Western? I mean, Cumberbatch never got out of his f****** chaps. He had two pairs of chaps — a woolly pair and a leather pair. And every f****** time he would walk in from somewhere — he never was on a horse, maybe once — he’d walk into the f****** house, storm up the fucking stairs, go lay in his bed in his chaps and play his banjo. It’s like, what the f***!"

The 'Tombstone' star went on to blast the film's director Jane Campion for choosing to shoot the Montana-based story in her home country of New Zealand and questioned her suitability to helm the project in the first place.

Speaking on the 'WTF' podcast, he added: "What the fuck does this woman from down there know about the American West? Why the f*** did she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana? And say this is the way it was? That f****** rubbed me the wrong way!"