SILVERADO (1985) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Lawrence Kasdan
Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover,
Kevin Costner, Brian Dennehy, Linda Hunt,
Jeff Goldblum, John Cleese, Rosanna Arquette,
Jeff Fahey, Joe Seneca, James Gammon,
Amanda Wyss, Lynn Whitfield, Richard Jenkins
This movie does for westerns what "Raiders of the Lost Ark" did for the action/adventure serials of the '30s and '40s. It's a throwback, not to a time that was more innocent necessarily, but a time when our movies were. It's got just about everything you'd expect to find in a traditional western, except maybe Indians: good guys, bad guys, gunfights, shootouts, saloons and saloon girls, shady gamblers, crooked lawmen, a cattle stampede, pioneers in covered wagons, knives, whiskey, racism and a climactic showdown on a dusty street with the steeple of the town church looming in the background. It's a highly romanticized view of the West, and of western movies, in which the romantic subplots, between Kevin Kline and Linda Hunt, and Scott Glenn and Rosanna Arquette, are almost subliminal. It's got a great cast, most of whom, other than Kevin Costner, aren't known for their work on the frontier. And Costner, playing Glenn's high-spirited younger brother, gives the kind of loose, funny, free-wheeling performance that turns young actors into movie stars, which, in fact, it did. Lots of westerns are more original than this, and many are more profound, but few deliver the old-fashioned goods in a way that's more purely enjoyable.
Brian Dennehy
(1938-2020)
