Silverado (film)

Silverado is a 1985 American Western film, first released on July 10, 1985. It was directed by Lawrence Kasdan and written by Lawrence and Mark Kasdan. The movie features an ensemble cast, including Kevin Kline as Paden, Scott Glenn as Emmett, Danny Glover as Malachi "Mal" Johnson, Kevin Costner as Jake, John Cleese as Sheriff John T. Langston and Brian Dennehy as Sherriff Cobb.

Plot overview

Four "lawful outlaws"—Paden (Kline), Emmett (Glenn), Jake (Costner) and Mal (Glover)—meet and travel to the town of Silverado, where they thwart a corrupt rancher and the ruthless sheriff who is on the rancher's payroll.

The film opens with a gunfight; Emmett kills three men, henchmen of a man named Ethan McKendrick (though Emmett does not know it at the time), whose father Emmett had killed a few years before. Emmett has recently been released from prison for the killing. As he travels to the town of Silverado, he finds a man, Paden, lying near death in the desert. The men Paden had been riding with had robbed him of nearly everything and left him for dead.

Emmett and Paden ride to the town of Turley to meet Emmett's brother, Jake, who has been jailed unfairly for killing a man in self-defense. Paden is also jailed when he finds the man who stole his Colt pistol and hat and kills him. Emmett breaks the two of them out of jail and the three escape with the help of Malachi Johnson, a black sharpshooter who was run out of town by Turley's overzealous sheriff, expatriate Englishman Langston (Cleese).

After helping a wagon train of settlers recover their stolen cash from a group of thieves and leading them to Silverado, the group disbands to find their relatives, or, like Paden, settle into the town. Emmett and Jake hear from their sister's husband that Ethan McKendrick is attempting to seize all the land surrounding the town for cattle ranching. Mal finds his father's farm has been overrun by McKendrick's men and cattle, and his father has been driven illegally from his land and into a nearby mesa, where he hides in a cave.

The group soon discovers that the town sheriff, Cobb, an old friend of Paden's, is on McKendrick's payroll and is defending the actions of the cattle rancher's thugs. Emmett, Jake and Mal decide to fight back and Paden is left to decide whether to keep the lucrative job Cobb has offered him or pursue justice. At the film's climax, Jake, Mal, Paden and Emmett fight their way to McKendrick and defeat him. Paden later kills Cobb in a shootout and becomes the town's new Sheriff.

Featured cast

Actor	Role
Rosanna Arquette	Hannah
Ray Baker	Ethan McKendrick
John Cleese	Sheriff John T. Langston
Kevin Costner	Jake Hollis
Brian Dennehy	Sheriff Cobb
Jeff Fahey	Deputy Tyree
James Gammon	Dawson
Scott Glenn	Emmet Hollis
Danny Glover	Malachi 'Mal' Johnson
Jeff Goldblum	Calvin 'Slick' Stanhope
Earl Hindman	J.T. Hollis
Linda Hunt	Stella
Brion James	Hobart
Richard Jenkins	Kelly
Kevin Kline	Paden
Marvin J. McIntyre	Clerk at Cavalry Post
Joe Seneca	Ezra Johnson
Pepe Serna	Scruffy, McKendrick Hand
Lynn Whitfield	Rae Johnson
Amanda Wyss	Phoebe

Awards

Silverado's score by Bruce Broughton was nominated for the Academy Award for Original Music Score in 1985. It lost to Out of Africa.

1986 Academy Awards (Oscars)

• Nominated - Best Original Score — Bruce Broughton
• Nominated - Best Sound Mixing — Donald O. Mitchell, Rick Kline, Kevin O'Connell, David M. Ronne

1986 Casting Society of America (Artios)

• Nominated - Best Casting for Feature Film: Drama — Wallis Nicita

Trivia

• Lawrence Kasdan offered the role of Jake to Kevin Costner in part to make up for having cut Costner's scenes in The Big Chill.
• Earl Hindman, who plays J.T. (the brother-in-law of Emmett and Jake), plays Wilson on the television series Home Improvement, although he is hardly recognizable since a running gag of the series is to always obscure his face. At one point, J.T. is gagged, in a manner similar to the "face-hiding" that Wilson used.
• The final line of Silverado, "We'll be back!", shouted by Jake as he and Emmett ride into the sunset, has had countless fans wishing that a follow-up movie had been made (a 1999 nationwide video poll chose Silverado as the film "Most Deserving of a Sequel"), but time has eliminated that possibility.
• John Cleese's first line: "What's all this then?" is a direct reference to the words often uttered by law enforcement officers who entered the scene of a crime in Monty Python's Flying Circus.
• Kevin Costner owns a casino in Deadwood, South Dakota called the Midnight Star, after the saloon in the movie. He had wanted to name the casino Silverado, but there was already a casino by that name in Deadwood.
• The church featured in this film is also shown in the Guns N' Roses video "November Rain".

External links