This is undoubtedly my all-time favorite western, with Open Range a close second...

Why this movie doesn't have an average rating of 8+ stars is beyond me?? The only reason I can figure is that a bunch of die hard Spaghetti Western fans that prefer watching movies with dubbed-in dialogue gave it a poor rating. SMHThis western has it all: an interesting storyline with numerous sub plots, great performances from an all-star cast, and a polished production.The 80's isn't known for having very many epic westerns, but this one definitely ranks in my Top 3 with the likes of Pale Rider and The Long Riders.

Continuing my plan to watch every Kevin Costner movie in order, I come to his second movie of 1985 Silverado. Plot In A Paragraph: A bunch of misfits team up, to right the wrongs in a town called Silverado. Quirky and fun, it's more of a flashier western, in the mould of Young Guns or Tombstone, than Something like The Outlaw Josie Wales or Pale Rider (the latter released the same year) with beautiful location photography, a fantastic score (which was one of the 2 Oscars the movie was nominated for) it's a very fun easy watch.It's a cliché story with stereotypical characters, but each of the four leads (Kevin Klein, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover and KC) performances are so good, none more so than KC, it never for one minute bothers you. Here he shows great promise for more important roles in the western genre. His fast- moving performance is a lot of fun, and he makes the most of his role. KC establishes his character as a likable egotist right from the start. Of the four lead actors, he is he is the only one that looks like he belongs in the western genre. I don't think it's bias, if I say KC steals this picture. Watching it now, it's clear the guy has Stardust all over him.It's not without its problems though..... There is enough plot/sub plots and characters for two movies. The movie is saddled (yes pun intended) with an overly complex storyline involving numerous subplots. For example each of the four main Cowboys has their own subplot, as do other characters, and it ends up a bit disjointed, and contains a handful of characters that are just unnecessary to the story. John Cleese seems to think he is in a different movie and Jeff Goldblum (of whom I am a fan) looks totally out of place in a western too. But the faults can't stop the enjoyment of the movie. Grossing $32 million at the domestic box office, Silverado ended the year the 28th highest grossing movie of 1985.

Written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, "Silverado" (1985) is a strange beast. On one hand, the film is an obvious homage to roughly 70 years worth of Westerns, particularly those by John Ford, Anthony Mann, Howard Hawks and Sergio Leone. On the other hand, the film is a light-hearted adventure in the vein of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Kasdan, of course, famously worked on Lucas and Spielberg's "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars" franchises, franchises which were themselves postmodern "updates" of 1930s pulp fantasies.Kasdan's approach should result in something flippant and silly. Tempering this is Kasdan's screenplay, which resembles his scripts for "The Big Chill" and "Grand Canyon", both of which were fairly serious, sprawling melodramas. The result is a film which is constantly pulling in multiple directions. "Silverado" is a highbrow western, but also a lowbrow crowd-pleaser. It's a comedy, but also a drama. It's a film packed with caricatures and cartoonish archetypes, but also one which attempts to sketch a large community of "serious" characters. And so on and so on."Silverado" is at its best during its first act, where Kasdan presents the jaunty adventures of well-meaning rascals. Amongst these are Emmet (Scott Glenn), Paden (Kevin Kline), Jake (Kevin Costner) and Mal (Danny Glover). Today, Mal's tale is the most interesting. An African American cowboy who's tired of being beaten down, Glover's character offers a sanitised version of 1970s blaxploitation heroes (particularly Fred Williamson's "Boss N****r" films) and also serves as the midpoint between John Ford's "Sergeant Rutledge" and Tarantino's "Django Unchained". In 1985, you simply didn't find westerns with black heroes like this.The rest of "Silverado" is less interesting, particularly its last act, which combines typical 1980s blockbuster excess (lots of gunfights), with a familiar plot about a corrupt sheriff (Brian Dennehy). A funny performance by Kevin Costner makes the film's second half tolerable, but it's not enough. "Silverado" becomes too humourless, too loud, too serious, a stance which the film is too dumb to make work. In a way, it's the Hollywood version of Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West", another cut-and-paste movie which, weighed down by pastiche, inexorably gets too big for its boots.7/10 – For those looking for better westerns, both high-brow and low (in that order), consider: Altman's "Sitting Bull" and "McCabe and Mrs Miller", Martin Ritt's "Hombre" and "Hud", "Ulzana's Raid", "Will Penny", "Ride with the Devil", Cox's "Walker", Benton's "Bad Company", Pontecorvo's "Burn!", "Dead Man", Siegel's "The Beguiled", "Lonely are the Brave", "Red River", "Dances with Wolves", "Viva Zapata", "Two Mules for Sister Sara", "My Darling Clementine", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", Corbucci's "The Great Silence", "The Long Riders", "Wild Bill" (1995), "The Ballad of Cable Hogue", "Tombstone", "The Shootist" and Costner's "Open Range".