Silverado (1985)
I don’t wanna kill you, and you don’t wanna be dead.
THE SUMMARY: A band of misfit cowboys assembles, then splits up, then reunites, then splits up again, then reunites again, and this continues perpetually while they fight various generic bad guys in a small frontier town. Aside from the occasional smirk-worthy wild west action moment, this is a movie with a needlessly complex plot about nothing, and too many characters for any one to shine.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER JG HENRY: This is my favorite western, which says a lot because there are so many good western movies that I love. It has an incredible, deep cast and there are so many stories within this movie. It has one of the best opening scenes for a western, and the music works well. This movie has everything a good western must have: lots of gunfights between good guys and bad guys.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S SHOW AI ART FOR THE WEEK:
I don’t think digital blackface will cut it, but if anyone wants to write a hitpiece about me for it, I appreciate it.
THE BEST:
Straight to the action: It’s a strange coincidence that last week, Contact’s lengthy intro annoyed me enough to include it my criticisms, because then came Silverado to correct the error. Not that I don’t see comparable flaws in this movie, but I do appreciate getting straight to the action, and Silverado does, setting the tone with a tense and clever gunfight, and inspiring western scenery. Great start. If only the rest of the movie followed with similar excellence.
Buy a gun the American way - no questions asked: I know I’m supposed to appreciate other things about the underwear showdown, and I do - it’s by far Silverado’s most memorable scene - but mostly I just long for an America like this where arming yourself is actually as easy as Democrats say it is. Walk in, be a clearly unstable person in his underwear with some sort of bizarre urgency, and walk out with a revolver, answering no question other than whether you have the necessary money. Are there downsides to this approach? Probably. Are they worse than giving more power to the ATF? Certainly not.
To that point, it was the unstable underwear man who achieved justice in this scenario, not even the local sheriff, let alone the feds.
Silly, endearing action: In the theme of the underwear showdown, to appreciate this movie requires enjoying that sort of silly, exaggerated, old west shoot-em-up type action. Yes, many of these scenes are preposterous: knocking the prison guard out by hiding in a jacket like this is The Little Rascals, Emmett almost blowing Mal’s head off with a rifle shot just to warn him about an approaching enemy, Jake’s double-shot on Tyree and whoever that other guy was, and many more. But these moments are entertaining specifically because they’re so silly. So I won’t become so joyless and annoying as to say these scenarios are implausible, though they are, because that’s the point.
It’s enjoyable, yes. But it’s little to think about later.
Straight to the action
I had to rewind to make sure I saw the bullet hole in the butt flap correctly.
Jake’s double shot
THE WORST:
Too many characters, and too much going on, without a clear purpose or message: Who’s doing what now, where, and why? This movie suffers from a gigantic cast that makes it very difficult to remember who is in what role, what the characters’ relationships are, and even what they’re doing at all. I’m still not clear why everyone is going to Silverado, why two of the guys are going to California, or what the purpose of any of this journey even is.
Because the plot is so messy and meandering, and because there are so many characters, it’s very difficult to be invested in the story, or for any one character to shine. There isn’t even a clear protagonist. Who is Silverado’s main character? There are four plausible choices: Emmett, Paden, Jake, or Mal. Or all of them together, but if you have four main characters each with independent stories, you really have none. They just cancel each other out. Anything interesting about one is diluted by the others.
An underwhelming ending: For all the buildup to this duel between Paden and Cobb, it ends as boringly and predictably as possible. No suspense. No mystery. No twist. Just ‘good guy’ shoots ‘bad guy,’ and that’s it. I understand this movie is older, but it’s not as though superior western standoffs hadn’t been done years or decades prior. See The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly or The Outlaw Josey Wales, just for examples from movies we’ve reviewed. Maybe it’s unfair to compare others to Clint, but if you want high Wickies, that’s the benchmark.
Are they tag-teaming this chick, or…?: As I often write about in my reviews, I’m generally not a fan of obligatory romance. Not every movie has to have a love story. So that’s not the perspective of my criticism here, but if you’re going to write a love story, like the overall plot of Silverado, can we get some clarity or purpose? What is even going on with this Hannah bitch? Paden makes a move on her, but it goes nowhere. Then she’s warm on Emmett at the end, but he just leaves, while Paden stands beside her, apparently no longer interested.
It’s the most boring love triangle ever written, like an episode of Mormon Jerry Springer. It lacks any intrigue or conflict, and ends in ambiguous pleasantries. Maybe both Emmett and Paden hit it and quit it, because it was so dull they’d rather roam the desert and try their luck with cacti instead.
No twist. No drama. Entirely predictable.
THE RATING: 3/5 Wickies. Some decently entertaining western action, but the plot is a chore to keep track of, and leads to nowhere interesting.
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NEXT WEEK: Spaceballs (1987)
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