SILVERADO (1985) - ***1/2

I LOVED this movie as a kid, but now grown up I've come to terms with reality. Its a really good generic western.

Writer/Director/Producer Lawrence Kasdan effectively tried to do for the western genre what George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had already done for the space opera and adventure serials. Except instead of wrapping up genre-conventions and cliches into a purified masterpiece like STAR WARS and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, Kasdan's SILVERADO ends up like TEMPLE OF DOOM: Very open about itself, and openly admitting of being good B-movie material created by A-level talent.

Effectively, Kasdan saw thousands of western episodes on television, hundreds of western movies, and cobbled together a pastiche script of moments we've all seen before. His heroes and villains are recognizable & predictable.

Yet what makes SILVERADO work is that the actors go full-fledged into their conventional genre roles, and have superb organic chemistry with each other. You buy the friendship between the tough badass Scott Glenn and the intelligent-if-unlucky Kevin Kline. You buy the fact that despite being a screwup, you (and the heroes) still care about the wreckless outlaw brother Kevin Costner. Despite the script-convenience, you accept that this trio would accept the sharp-shooting and righteous Danny Glover into their adventure.

This movie practically was the break-out picture for Costner's career. He plays his part with such vigor and earnesty. When we hear the possibility that he died, the feeling we get is that of lamentation. If Costner or anyone else had dropped the ball with such a character, I would have cheered at this news.

Instead, he earns the right for us to care. By the end of the decade, he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, and a decade later he would make several historic bombs.

The weakness of SILVERADO is within some of Kasdan's genre-exercises. While Jeff Goldblum is nice while he lasted, that character is useless script fat.* After we have Scott Glenn settle his feud with his enemies in the climax, Kline's duel with his friend-turned-enemy Brian Dennehey is an after-thought, and lacks the suspense or drama that was needed to make the sequence effective.

If anything, a better ending should have been that the law-enforcer would have been spared and flees into the desert. Thus the cop and criminal switch places, for which in the Wild West, there is no difference between them, save for a shiny metal badge.

Yet as the heroes ride itno the sunset, one yells "we'll be back!" I would have been very much up for a sequel to see these 4 again.

*=Though I wonder if Kasdan wrote all that up just to explain why Glover would have a knife in jail.