Silverado: Collector's Edition

Introduction

Silverado has been on my radar for years, no decades. I was a sprightly teen when wandering through the TV channels one night (there were only four), I happened upon Sheriff John Cleese, and Kevin Costner delivering a performance that I had never seen before or since from him. I'd missed the start of the film, so I wasn't too committed to staying with that channel, but it looked like a whole lot of fun, just the sort of Western that I really enjoy, and I swore to myself that I would find the time to watch it in its entirety when it was next on television. That was close to twenty years ago now. It's been on television many times, most recently a couple of showings on FilmFour; it's been out on video, and even DVD for years. I have somehow contrived to miss this film at every opportunity. When a few weeks ago I saw the film on sale for under £4 on a website, I made a vow. Not only would I buy the disc, but I would review it as well. After all, to my shame, I still have discs that I have owned for close to ten years now, that have still to grace the inside of a DVD player. I swore it wouldn't be another ten years before I saw Silverado.


A man named Emmett gets out of prison after five years, only to be ambushed in a shack where he spends the night. He then helps a man named Paden, left to die in a desert after being robbed. The two head to a town named Turley, where they help a black man named Malachi trying to buy a drink in a racist town, before going on to break Emmett's brother Jake out of prison before he can be hanged. These four men are heading for a town called Silverado, and a whole heap more trouble than they've just been through. Silverado is cattle country, and the biggest rancher there is a man named McKendrick. He'd like to keep it that way, and isn't too keen on the settlers heading West, stakeholders like Mal's family, or thorns in his side like the brothers Jake and Emmett. McKendrick has gotten himself a crooked sheriff named Cobb to make the law in Silverado. The trouble is that Cobb and Paden used to ride together, and Cobb could use a man like Paden. Friendships and loyalties will be tested as the range wars come to Silverado.

Picture

We're getting close to 3½ hours of video on this one disc, so it's surprising that the quality of the main feature stands up as well as it does. The 2.40:1 anamorphic transfer could be better though. The film has stood up relatively well over that past couple of decades, and dirt and print damage is less than it could have been. There is a consistent level of grain through the film, but nothing too annoying. The eighties film stock is telling in that the image looks a little muted compared to Westerns of the fifties and sixties, but the biggest disappointment is the softness of the image. It's lacking in sharpness and vividness of details, while flesh tones do appear a little flat. It does detract from the great cinematography. This is a Western of the old school, scope is used to great effect and the New Mexico locations in winter are breathtaking. This really ought to have been a two-disc set (it was released as a 2-disc Superbit set in the US).

Sound

You have a choice between DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Surround Spanish. Subtitles are available in English, English HOH, Arabic, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. The first thing you'll note about Silverado is the score by Bruce Broughton. You get the full Western with the orchestral theme, and it really fills the soundstage and the screen. The sound is fairly expressive too, with suitable ambience, and directionality to the effects. However, the dialogue remains firmly front-focussed, as you would expect from a film of the era of Dolby Stereo.

Extras

The film gets a commentary to it, and it's a track well worth listening to, as rather than the technical creators, or the anecdotal actors, we get academics, writers and historians to talk about their subject of choice, American History and the Western movie. Frank Thompson, Paul Hutton, and Steve Aaron talk about all things Western, from authenticity to creative licence, the actual history compared to the movie, other movies, the decline and fall of the Western as an American artform, and its subsequent refusal to stay buried.

A Return to Silverado is a 21-minute interview with Kevin Costner, who played Jake in the film. He talks about his love for Westerns, his experience on the movie, and how he made the character of Jake his own.

The Making Of Silverado last 37 minutes, and features the cast and the crew talking about everything from writing the film, building the sets, to training the actors up with guns and horses. There's also an explanation to why the Hannah storyline was dropped, and outtakes of the same. This documentary was shot in 1998, although it also features period behind the scenes footage from 1985.


A History of Western Shootouts is a glorified trailer, where John Cleese introduces some of the memorable gunfights that featured in ten Westerns from the Sony Pictures back catalogue.

Finally there are trailers for The Professionals (no, not that one), The Bridge on the River Kwai, and It Happened One Night.

This is the second release of Silverado in the UK; the first disc only had the making of documentary to it. As mentioned, this second release takes the US Superbit 2-Disc set, strips out the DTS soundtrack, and then crams all the extras onto the feature disc.

Conclusion

At first acquaintance Silverado is a blast! It's also a little refreshing, coming from an era where filmmakers were of the universal opinion that the Western required constant reinvention. Silverado is quite the opposite, it's unashamedly a homage to the original Westerns, taking the best bits of all of them in an effort to distil those films down to what made them work, and by doing so, become the quintessential Western itself, albeit with an eighties sheen to it. It's got it all, gunfights, barroom brawls, jailbreaks, horse stunts, cattle stampedes, showdowns, gamblers, homesteaders, crooked lawmen, and reformed villains. All that's missing is a train robbery and some Injuns. But given a little consideration, it becomes clear that Silverado doesn't quite work, although it's not through lack of trying.


The story itself is a classic of the genre, the corrupt cattle baron wanting to keep his land free of settlers and rival farmers, and hiring a crooked lawman to keep his piece of the American dream at the expense of all others. McKendrick has already got history with brothers Jake and Emmett (Emmett killed McKendrick's father), the crooked lawman Cobb has an uneasy friendship with Paden, while Mal's family trying to build a life for themselves with a small stake, fall victim to McKendrick's land grabbing tendencies. The scene is set for a grand showdown of the old school, a man's got to do what a man's got to do sort of thing. Like the best Westerns, it's a film for broad audiences, violent when it needs to be, but also replete with comedy, great cinematography, drama, a little romance, and plenty of male bonding.


Silverado still falls flat in my opinion, and one reason is that it simply tries to do too much. It has four main characters, four stories to tell, and just two hours in which to do it. The characters don't get fleshed out properly, and none of the stories truly satisfy. The Hannah storyline was dropped completely, which makes Rosanna Arquette's appearance in this film thematically baffling, and too much time was given to recreating classic Western moments of old, instead of efficiently telling the story. The second issue I have is with the cast. Film acting in the eighties was very much of the minimalist school, it still is, but the classic Western of old was a grand opera of a genre. Characters, and actors needed to be larger than life, they needed to fill the screen, to stand out against the wide-open spaces and grand landscapes of the Wild West. The John Waynes and Jimmy Stewarts of the period could take scenery like the Grand Canyon and chew it up and spit it out. Silverado has a cast of minimalists. I know of only one such actor who can make Westerns work, and none of these actors is Clint Eastwood. Ironically, it's Kevin Costner who has pretty much made a name for himself playing understated and laconic characters, who most fills the screen. His ebullient and childlike gunfighter Jake almost makes the film for me, and he owns every scene that he's in.


Silverado is a wonderful homage to the Westerns of old, it's a two-hour replay of some of the finest Western moments, with great dialogue, amazing action and stunts, and scenery to die for. It's as big and grand as it could ever hope to be, and it will most definitely entertain you. But then it will put you in mind of those very same Westerns of old, and you'll realise that you would much rather watch those instead. A for effort, C for execution.