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74 out of 94 people found the following review useful: Cult Classic Tribute to Western Clichés..., 2 June 2004 Author: Ben Burgraff (cariart) from Las Vegas, Nevada
By 1985, the movie 'western' was a genre long dormant, with film critics quick to point out that audiences had become far too 'sophisticated' for old-fashioned "shoot-'em-ups". Two film makers decided to test the waters, however; Clint Eastwood, reviving an older version of his "Man with No Name", directed and starred in his SHANE homage, PALE RIDER; and Lawrence Kasdan, fresh from the huge success of THE BIG CHILL, fulfilled his life-long dream to make a western, with SILVERADO. Neither film was successful at the box office, and pundits predicted they would soon be forgotten...but a new force in the movie industry was emerging, video rentals, and SILVERADO, with it's spectacular action sequences, charismatic heroes, and sweeping, unforgettable music score (by Bruce Broughton), was an unexpected and overwhelming hit, drawing Hollywood's attention to the new market, and lifting the film to the near-classic cult status it enjoys today.While PALE RIDER would focus on Clint Eastwood's continuing demythologizing of the West (which would culminate in 1992's UNFORGIVEN), SILVERADO embraces all the 'classic' Western clichés, serving them up with such exuberance that they seem 'fresh'. The story of four likable 'shootists' of nearly superhuman skills, bonding, and ultimately taking on a corrupt sheriff and his brutal gang of deputies in the town of Silverado, trots out one traditional element after another, from the classic 'bushwhack' (with a John Ford 'Doorway Framing' homage shot) to the 'pretty widow' in a wagon train; from the 'saloonkeeper with a heart of gold' to the 'crooked gambler with a concealed weapon'...and even climaxes with that most traditional of finales, as two ex-partners face off on a dusty street in an old-fashioned Western shootout.The four leads couldn't have been cast more perfectly; Scott Glenn channels Gary Cooper as a laconic cowboy fresh from an undeserved 5-year prison stretch; Kevin Kline exudes his signature charm as an ex-gang member whose life changed because of "a dog"; Danny Glover is warm and reassuring as a man moving west from Chicago to help his family, armed with a legendary Henry rifle; and, best of all, young Kevin Costner, in his breakout performance, is irresistible, wild and acrobatic, as Glenn's ever-optimistic, carefree younger brother, a part Kasdan wrote specifically for the actor, after his scenes were cut from THE BIG CHILL.The supporting cast is equally superb, with standout performances by giant Brian Dennehy, John Cleese (as a sheriff who knows 'where' his jurisdiction ends), Jeff Goldblum, Linda Hunt, James Gammon ("You led a posse to my best hide-out??"), Jeff Fahey, and, in a wonderful if brief role, breathtaking Rosanna Arquette, as the widow courted by both Kline and Glenn. With a cast THIS good, it is remarkable that the film had to 'go to video' to achieve success!The final line of SILVERADO, "We'll be back!", shouted by Costner as he and Glenn ride 'into the sunset', has had countless fans wishing that a follow-up movie had been made (a 1999 nationwide video poll chose SILVERADO as the film "Most Deserving of a Sequel"), but time has, sadly, eliminated that possibility. The film that 'failed' when released, in a genre that 'experts' considered passé, is, after nearly 20 years, still winning new fans.As Kevin Kline and Linda Hunt say, as a toast: "Here's to the good stuff...May it last a long time!"
54 out of 73 people found the following review useful: "Silverado" carries us out into the overpowering grandeur of the American West..., 16 April 2006 Author: ironside (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
One of the cruel twists that sometimes appears in the showdown is the spectacle friend facing friend at opposite ends of a gun… Kline faces his friend and fellow lawman Dennehy… And the two come into direct conflict… They know that the only true test can be when one outdraws and kills the other… The inexorable outcome is a tense showdown… With such equal abilities a split second is the difference between life and death… The two friends square up and draw in the same instant and simultaneously… Kline is surprisingly effective as the cowboy with a troubled past and Dennehy, as Sheriff Cobb, generates a palpable menace… Scott Glenn is a professional gunslinger, not an angel or a traditional 'goodie' by any means but a man with a certain honor and nobility… His life is a series of confrontations… He plans to start life over in California with his brother Jake but, as ever, there are always punks who wants to take him down…Glenn does not have the screen presence of some of the other characters of the film, but the action-oriented films ideally suited him…Kevin Costner is charismatic as the sympathetic young hotshot gunslinger, soft at heart… He measures his self by his fancy double gun belt… Wearing two guns, he kills two armed guys in a couple of seconds with two shots— one bursts from each pearl-handled gun—and he didn't even aim…Danny Glover must overcome the racism of Turley to find the 'baddies' who killed his old father and wounded his sister… No doubt racism is rampant in this part of the country… The film succeeded in introducing a strong black character with a look of high expectation on his face…Villains in Lawrence Kasdan's "Silverado" are all quite good… Ray Baker (Ethan McKendrick) is totally without moral redemption whose job it is to run settlers off their homesteads… John Cleese, is the nasty sheriff (Langston) dressed rather elegantly in suit and bowler... Jeff Goldblum remembers me Lee Van Cleef in a scene from "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral". In this scene, Cleef prepares himself to kill Kirk Douglas by a small gun hidden in his left boot… Goldblum, in "Silverado" lifts his pant leg, at the poker table, and reveals the handle of a long knife secreted in his boot…Rosanna Arquette's short scenes in the movie look to be going to a romantic relationship involving her and the two heroes (Kline and Glenn) but nothing ever occurs… Even Lynn Whitfield as Glover's sister has so little dialogue and screen time that she doesn't emerge well in her true character… Linda Hunt makes her best as Stella, the 'Midnight Star' in a velvet dress, who runs the local saloon… Filmed on ravishing locations around New Mexico, "Silverado" is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre… It is filled with challenge, and excitement… It catches the perfect blue sky above the orange desert and celebrates the beauty of wagon trains moving through pretty, rolling country… splashing noisily across the river… It exhibits expansive saloons busy with gamblers, drinkers, and lovely brightly-dressed girls... It shows fantastic shootouts, ambushes, jail breaks, outlaw hideouts, bar fights, and cattle stampede…
46 out of 61 people found the following review useful: Excellent, 2 July 2001 Author: Darth Sidious (darth_sidious@talk21.com) from England
Silverado is damn good fun. Being a small fan of the Western genre, I felt this was the most refreshing one I've seen in a while. The genre had pretty much died, but came back in Silverado, and it felt so fresh.The plot is simple and cliche, I think it's paying homage to the classics. It sticks within the Western boundary and does its thing.The cast is pretty good, and well known, but in 1985, these actors were just Hollywood virgins. I was surprised by John Cleese, he stuck out like a sore thumb, but I enjoyed his performance. You have Costner hamming it up, and Jeff Goldblum was cool. Scott Glenn was probably the best. Hell, Glover was pretty good, too.The direction is wonderful as is the editing, the film moves along at a decent pace. I wish Lawrence was a more prominent director, he deserves more success.The film score is very nice, fits the film perfectly.Overall, one of the best Westerns in the last 25 years.
39 out of 53 people found the following review useful: "Let's get 'em!", 22 October 2005 Author: crowrobot
That one line from Jake (Kevin Costner) as he, Paden (Kevin Kline), Emmett (Scott Glenn), and Mal (Danny Glover) are riding into town for the last battle against a corrupt sheriff (Brian Dennehy) exemplifies everything that is great about 'Silverado'. It's a high-spirited adventure that is fun, does not take itself too seriously (well, maybe a little), and cheerfully reenacts Western clichés. It's the kind of movie where you can tell the actors had fun making it, and you have fun too.The acting is uniformly excellent. Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, and Danny Glover all bring quiet dignity as well as low-key humor to their roles, but it's Kevin Costner who impressed me the most. As Glenn's cocky young brother, Costner doesn't even bother to contain his glee at being in a Western. He gives the most fun performance in the movie, and it's good to see a younger Costner not taking himself nearly as seriously as he does now. The supporting cast has some nice players: John Cleese shows up as a fair-minded sheriff who seems to have walked over from a Monty Python skit; Academy Award-winner Linda Hunt ('The Year Of Living Dangerously') steals scenes as a strong-willed bar owner who Kevin Kline befriends; and Brian Dennehy is thoroughly slimy as the villain.The action is fun, and director Lawrence Kasdan shows a gift for this material (granted, he was the person who wrote 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'), and the screenplay (also by Kasdan) is joyous in the way it resurrects the Western. The movie also has one of the best action scores I've ever heard by Bruce Broughton, and I was humming the title theme as the movie concluded.'Silverado' is a shining example of the Western genre, and it stands as one of the greatest pure entertainment Westerns ever made.
34 out of 47 people found the following review useful: Great entertainment, 11 January 2005 Author: Peter Swanson (pswanson1@mac.com) from United States
I love this movie, so much that I finally got tired of renting it and bought a copy. I tell anyone who asks that it's "...the western for 12-year-old boys of all ages." I'd guess that women would enjoy it also, if for no other reason than the superb male cast. I can't think of a film which has a cast with greater depth. I love the humor woven through the episodes of action and buddyhood, and nearly fell out of my seat laughing when John Cleese first appeared on screen. His first line is an all-time great, right up there with Tommy Lee Jones' "My my, what a mess" in The Fugitive (I won't quote it, in case you haven't seen the film). If you want to be thoroughly entertained for a couple of hours, and don't require powerful social import in your viewing choices, I'd recommend Silverado strongly. Actually, the relationship of Danny Glover to the main protagonists IS socially important, so enjoy that too.
22 out of 28 people found the following review useful: Rip roaring, hard riding, gun twirling Western, 21 July 2000 Author: David Matthews (dmatthews03@hotmail.com) from Toronto, Canada
Westerns are hard to come by these days so make the most of this; it's a good one. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a spoof but it certainly doesn't take itself too seriously,best not to worry about trying to follow the plot just go along with the roller coaster ride. There's lots of hard riding, fancy shooting and athleticism by our worthy heroes as they face off with the usually overweight and constantly smiling villains who don't quite twirl their moustaches but come close. The heroine is rather insipid but this is an action picture and the romance doesn't get in the way too much. It all goes on a little too long but there's lots of fun to be had along the way.
25 out of 34 people found the following review useful: Entertaining, but not innovative enough, 25 February 2002 Author: Standfast from Half Moon Bay, CA
Many of the reviews say _Silverado_ broke new ground for the Western genre, but I would argue that while it was undoubtedly good escapist fun, it was more derivative than innovative.Sure, the conversations often seem much more natural than those from other Westerns, and indeed most of the characters are drawn with more dimensions intact, but the entire script could have been pulled together by pulling scenes from a bag full of ideas from other movies. Not to mention the locations, which I could have sworn I recognized from films like _The Big Country_ and anything by John Ford.For example, Brian Dennehy did a fine job, but you could tell who his character was just by the fact that Dennehy was cast in the role. Many of his characters share the traits of Sheriff Cobb (more than this, I won't say here).I have to say that as a firm non-fan of Kevin Costner, even I have to admit he did fine here as well... as did all the lead actors. Their careers since _Silverado_ have demonstrated that this was an unusually gifted ensemble.
20 out of 25 people found the following review useful: An Entertainng, Underrated Western, 24 June 2006 Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States
If you are looking for a very entertaining western, it's hard to top this one. It's fairly long at 134 minutes, but the deep cast and always-interesting story make the time fly by.The first half of the film is about as good as it gets but two climactic scenes at the end get a little too carried away with the "Rambo" mentality of good guys not getting shot when they should have, etc. But, overall, it's so good it is still very highly-recommended. Among the "lists" you see on this website's message boards and elsewhere, you rarely see this movie mentioned among top westerns and that is a huge oversight.There are four main "good guys" that are played by well-known actors: Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Kevin Costner and Danny Glover. I especially liked Kline as "Paden" with his gentlemanly manner about him and Glenn's voice always makes him interesting. Costner is so young looking he almost looks like a teenager.Brian Dennehy, as the villainous "Sheriff Cobb," is verbally restrained in here, which was nice to hear, for a change but he's still intense and fascinating. (This movie marked the 10,000th time Hollywood made a lawman the villain since the 1960s).The story is fun, a straight cowboy movie with no romances or gratuitous sex scenes thrown in and has the usual beautiful western scenery and photography. The only problem was the sound. The soundtrack is so loud so have to crank up your center speaker to hear the dialog over the music.
6 out of 8 people found the following review useful: 3/4ths of an Epic Western, 2 August 1999 Author: Bob-45 from Savannah, GA
SILVERADO is one of exasperatingly entertaining movies that leaves you frustrated that you are not more disappointed.A "killer" (pardon) the pun, opening sequence, a terrific gunfights in the claustrophobic confines of a mountain cabin introduces us to Emmet (Scott Glenn). As Emmet opens the cabin door to spectacular western mountain scenery, Bruce Broughton's majestic opening title music creates the perfect atmosphere for excitement. By the end of title credits, we are introduced to Payden (Kevin Kline), an incredibly low-keyed but ironic gunfighter. Soon we met Mel (Danny Glover) and Emmet's brother (Kevin Costner, in a terrific, funny performance). Throw John Cleese, Roseanna Arquette, Jeff Fahey, Linda Hunt, Jeff Goldblum Lynn Whitfield and, especially Brian Dennehy into the mix, and you have one terrific cast. That's just the problem: There are so many top notch actors to watch, by the time the action reaches SILVERADO, your not sure who to watch anymore.With all that terrific talent on hand, it's also amazing to me that Producer-Director-Writer Lawrence Kasdan (THE BIG CHILL) would cast such a weak head villain, particularly with such strong ones (Fahey and Dennehy) to compete for attention.Still this is the most "ridingist, fightingist, shootingist" western of the 80s, and one of the five best of the last three decades. See it!
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful: There shoulda been a sequel, 13 April 2009 Author: Michael Morrison (morrisonhimself@consultant.com) from Arizona
There are two reasons I say there should have been a sequel: One is that, simply, this was so great, so nearly perfect that it deserved and deserves follow-up.From largest role to smallest (and I don't mean Linda Hunt), the acting was superlative ... and here I have to pause to say it took several viewings for me to finally admit that, yes, even Kevin Costner, whom I generally and thoroughly dislike, was darn good as a cowboy.I saw this first in a theater, in Hollywood, with people from the industry, and absolutely LOVED it ... except for Kevin Costner.I was in awe of the script, of the acting, of the photography, of ... well, of everything ... except Kevin Costner.Well, I watched it recently on Turner Classic Movies and, reluctantly, decided it was just prejudice, however deserved, and in truth Costner really made a very good cowboy.There is a little secret here I won't completely divulge: Watch how actors mount their horses, and you'll see if they really know western riding and, for that matter, if the director knows his business.One of the actors deserving special praise is Brian Dennehy. As far as I am concerned, he can do no wrong. He is one of the very best actors in the business during the last 20 or 30 years, just an absolutely fabulous talent.Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, but even Jeff Goldblum was great in this role. Oh, I know he's good, but I would have thought, and did think, that a western setting would find him out of place. Wrong.Sheb Wooley has a small part and it was great to see him in what turned out to be one of his last roles. He, of course, was right at home.Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, and Danny Glover also looked right at home, as if they had been born making westerns.Linda Hunt, another actor who can seemingly do no wrong, was in another movie this same year, 1985, the terribly unfairly ignored "Eleni," and it and "Silverado" both were much better than the movie that carried nearly all the awards, and which I won't name here.That other film might have deserved the Oscar for its score, but even the score of "Silverado" was first class and would have got my vote if I were allowed to cast a ballot. Bruce Broughton, who has scored mostly for television, looked to be on the way to picking up the mantle of Elmer Bernstein, and I even bought the recorded score -- at retail rates! Which I never do. It is excellent music."Silverado" is an almost perfect movie.Oh, and the second reason there shoulda been a sequel: The last words shouted by the Kevin Costner character. Watch this movie and listen.
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