Silverado

Maybe the most enjoyable Western ever made

I don’t know how I feel about westerns. Like the films themselves, most of how I see of view westerns are through the lens of memory mixed with nostalgia. For me, it was quiet times on the couch next to my grandfather who loved watching the films of his youth, usually on a dedicated cable channel with Dennis Weaver popping in and out between films to talk about Audie Murphy or Jimmy Stewart.¹ But as a boy, westerns never quite resonated with me. I was raised in the era of Star Wars, so the idea of Native folks as “villains,” or the limits of direction (John Ford excluded) just didn’t appeal. But being with my grandfather did, so I watched them all, getting an early education in film and memory that I was completely unaware of.

Silverado was an exception to the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood films of the past. Released in 1985 and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, and cowritten by Kasdan and his brother Mark, Silverado just felt fresh to me. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising then that Lawrence Kasdan also penned The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, since on review one can argue that the original Star Wars trilogy is also a western. If you’re feeling a Raiders of the Lost Ark vibe from this film, you should since Kasdan wrote that too. Roger Ebert loved the “reckless brilliance” of this time upon its release, giving it 3 1/2 stars.

Silverado is not one of the “great” westerns—those films like The Searchers and Unforgiven—are far too serious. But it is maybe the most rewatchable. It’s probably the most fun. It features almost all the tropes of classic westerns—an outlaw who laid down his guns, an evil town sheriff, a dusty town, a card sharp, and a man out to save his family. It also depicts African-American homesteaders (a pre-Lethal Weapon Danny Glover and Lynn Whitfield) as part of western history, something rare in film in its moment in time. We also get Rosanna Arquette, who inspired one of the great pop rock songs of the decade:

And maybe you don’t know, but this movie also features a really young Kevin Costner making his western debut. And this got me thinking: at some point we are really going to have to consider Costner among the great western stars of all-time alongside the likes of Wayne, Eastwood, and others. I’ll write more about this later, but this about the body of work. There’s Silverado, Dances with Wolves, Wyatt Earp, The Postman, Open Range (criminally underrated), The Highwaymen, and his work on Yellowstone. That’s an impressive body of work spanning decades. I think he has to be on that list. But I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

In the four decades since its release Silverado has become a Western classic.

I’ve been wanting to show Silverado for the longest time on Historians At The Movies and tonight we finally get that chance. It’s available on Netflix, so if you want to join in, follow along on twitter by searching for the hashtag #HATM and pressing play at exactly 8pm eastern. We’ll see you tonight.

1. There also seemed to be cameos by big or fading stars at the time, something that Once Upon A Time in Hollywood picked up on brilliantly.