Time does funny things to some movies, doesn’t it. Take Silverado, Lawrence Kasdan’s spirited ode to the Western for example – to watch it now delivers all the typical tropes you’d expect of a sprawling, star-studded offering of the genre, but in 1985, it was intended to hit a little different. You see, by the 80s, the Western had essentially Yee-ed it’s last Haw and had shrivelled up from being the most prolific genre on the block to becoming less than a shadow of its former self.
Fresh from penning such things as The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Kasdan had it in mind to jog everyone’s memory about how much fun a good old Western could be, but did so with a knowing wink and a slick, 80s cast. While the result may not have jolted an entire genre back to life, there’s few cinematic love letters that contains as much unabashed fun as Silverado, be it genuinely bizarre examples of casting (John Cleese and Jeff Goldblum in a Western? Preposterous!), or a adoring adherence to conventions. Saddle up, it’s time to ride.
Through either quirks of fate, or just plain coincidence, we watch as four strangers eventually come together as they all plan to go from the town of Turley onward to the titular settlement of Silverado. We start with Emmett, who narrowly avoids getting bushwhacked on route by a gang of men by turning the tables on them by killing them all. From here he has a chance encounter with the mild mannered Paden, whom he discovers stranded in the dessert wearing nothing but his long johns and a sheepish expression. It seems that he too was jumped by a different group of thieves who thought it would be hilarious to strip him of all of his possessions and leave him there to die.
Forging a bond, Emmett and Paden get to Turley to find Emmett’s overly exuberant brother, Jake, only to discover that he’s due to be hanged in the morning for shooting a man in self defence and after planning to spring him, the trio soon becomes a quartet when they take on the company of Mal, a black cowboy Emmett and Paden aided earlier after an instance of racism.
After a couple of adventures, the group reach Silverado and disband to seek lives of their own, but it seems that they each discover that the place may not be the safe haven they hoped for. Firstly, Mal’s father is having issues with an unscrupulous, land snatching rancher named McKendrick, who in turn has issues with Emmett and his family after the fatal encounter the gunslinger had with his equally greedy father. But worse yet, Cobb, the charismatic, but cold-blooded sheriff of Silverado, is not only in bed with McKendrick’s underhanded schemes, but is actually an old, criminal associate of Paden’s, who has done him right by installing him as the pit boss of his local casino. Can these four, outnumbered men managed to stand up to the injustice they see tarnishing the sheen of Silverado?
Less a concerted attempt to raise an entire genre from the dead and more a perky reminder of how much fun a rootin’ tootin’ Western could be, Kasdan seems less bothered about reinventing the wheel as he is obsessed about how fast he can make it spin. While I would hardly go as far to call Silverado a comedy, the movie goes about its business while finding a nice balance between gumption, grit and a tongue planted firmly in its dusty cheek. After all, it’s thanks to Kasdan that we have the post modern throwback to adventure serials we know as Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and while his attempt to revitalise the Western may not be as revelatory as Spielberg and Lucas’ action classic, you only have to take a look at the gleefully eccentric cast to see that the director is having fun subverting a few conventions.
I mean where else would you find the pairing of Scott Glen’s typically grizzled do-gooder with a conscience-laden gunslinger played by Kevin Kline? Add to that the sight of a young Kevin Costner in his first Western playing a footloose and fancy free sharpshooter like a kid afflicted with severe attention deficit disorder as he absently mindedly climbs the bars of his cell like a monkey despite being hours from being hanged. Rounding off the quartet is Danny Glover, who seems to get the more serious end of the plot as he has to contend with issues with bigotry and the targeting of his father by Evil ranchers – but even beyond the strange casting of the leads, the rest of Silverado just keeps getting weirder. Monty Python alumni John Cleese, of all people, pops up as the dry-quipped sheriff of Turley, and even more surreal is the sight of Jeff Goldblum wearing an immense fur coat as a slimy gambler who goes by the name of Slick.
But beyond that, we also have Jeff Fahey on henchman duty, going all-out to give us the most villainous stare of the decade and Brian Dennehy as the deceptively friendly antagonist who may give the most Brian Dennehy performance of his career. In fact, if every other character Brian Dennehy ever played were to look up their ancestors on a history website, I’d bet my bottom dollar they’d all be related to Cobb.
All this mean that not only does Silverado’s hefty runtime go by deceptively fast, but it’s frankly a miracle that it isn’t more episodic than it could have been, what with there being multiple character threads that weave in and out of one another. Some admittedly get lost in the shuffle; I’m not entirely sure where the story of Rosanna Arquette’s character was supposed to be going and maybe if Fahey was responsible for more of the villainous activities of the bad guys, they’d be a more formidable force. But alternatively, other subplots, such as the budding friendship between Paden and Linda Hunt’s golden-hearted saloon owner are just perfect and the pace of the film gets a nice kick in the saddle by numerous perky shootouts which helps moderate the rather tricky tone. Some might be a little bamboozled as Kasdan’s insistence from bouncing to light hearted gun twirling (the look on Glenn’s face when Mal’s “pretend” fusillade gets a little too close for comfort is a picture) to the type of gritty gravitas that might as well come out of Pale Rider, but it makes perfect sense when you realise that it’s just a writer/director pay dues to a genre that he loves.
To end with the exact point that I started on, for all of its eccentricities, possibly the strangest thing about Silverado is that time has transformed it from a knowing, post-modern, Western throwback into being indistinguishable from the exact type of movie it was trying to emulate. Call it a full circle moment if you wish, but with Kasdan’s zesty direction delivering stylish thrills and a mouthwatering cast visibly thrilled that they get to ride horses and shoot guns, Silverado very nearly takes gold.
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