Silverado (1985)

Directed by Lawrence Kasdan. Starring Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Kevin Costner, Danny Glover, Brian Dennehy, Linda Hunt, John Cleese, Jeff Goldblum, Rosanna Arquette, Joe Seneca, Lynn Whitfield, Jeff Fahey, Amanda Wyss, Ray Baker. [PG-13]

Rousing, widescreen Western released at a time when the genre was, at best, on life support, and acts as both a “greatest hits”-package adventure for horse opera lovers and a robust “sampler platter” for younger audiences unfamiliar with rootin’-tootin’-cowboy-shootin’ on the silver screen. A quartet of Western character archetypes join forces to defeat a corrupt sheriff in the titular frontier town, but it’s a bit more complicated than that; there’s actually enough story here for at least four Wild West yarns, which means there’s never a dull moment, but it also leaves a lot of loose threads that were anything but necessary to the main story. For example, Arquette plays an implied love interest for Kline’s “reformed” outlaw, but she simply disappears for more than an hour before suddenly reappearing during the denouement; meanwhile, Goldblum shows up around the halfway point as a gambler who sides with the bad guys for no apparent reason. Yet for all the extraneous elements and familiar tropes, Kasdan (who directed, produced and co-scripted with brother Mark) delivers a mightily entertaining show that progresses smoothly across the hills and curves of its plotting and pacing, and while borrowing inspiration from his screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark, he gives the audience one darn thing after another so there’s no time to question the plot holes. It’s well-cast, too, even when going against the grain of expectations (having Costner play a rowdy and ingenuous goofball, dropping an Englishman played by Cleese into the mix as a sheriff “not from around these parts”, and so forth). John Bailey provides the sweeping photography, and Bruce Broughton composed the exciting score. James Gammon, Brion James, and Richard Jenkins (his film debut) all have small roles.

78/100