Silverado is a western film which stars Kevin Kline as Paden, a drifter in the old west who comes across three other rough riders on the range, Mal (Danny Glover), Emmett (Scott Glenn) and his younger brother Jake (Kevin Costner), as they travel the old west they come across a town called Silverado where their real adventure is about to begin.
Silverado is a beautiful looking western film, well directed by Lawrence Kasdan who is best known for writing The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and Raiders of the Lost Ark and is clearly trying to do a similar adventure in the style of those films.
Sadly though he falls way short of those great heights due to a very scattershot storyline in terms of those four main leads going off onto their own separate storylines that somehow manage to come together in the end but you don't get any sense of satisfaction in seeing that happen nor do we get to see the leads developed as a posse for just as Kasdan rallies them together. They go their separate ways in the very next scene.
The other big problem with this film is the endless supply of characters, there's two sheriffs (Brian Dennehy and John Cleese), a lot of deputies, the barmaid (Linda Hunt), the gambler (Jeff Goldblum), the fair lady of the land (Rosanna Arquette) and so on and so on.
Well, quite frankly some of these characters needed to go, namely Dennehy's and Goldblums' characters, Goldblum is a great actor but here he is unnecessary and just sucks up screen time for no real reason at all and Dennehy's character wasn't all that flash, again a great actor filling in the time card, what should've happened is the two sheriff's being swapped, Dennehy's at the beginning, Cleese's as the main one as his was set up to be the bad guy only for him to exit the film a few scenes later, what a sad waste of a great talent.
All in all, despite some small positives, this film misses the mark as it feels too episodic in its construction, to cluttered in its characterization and too dull for its own good and boy does it feel sad to say that as I am a huge Kasdan fan for he really was a key reason why Empire and Raiders are considered the best of their respective film series but this time, it all fell short, 2 out of 5.
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