Reviewed by Byron Potau.\u00a0 Viewed at the LA International Film Festival<\/p>\n
In 1985, with the western having been thought to be dead, especially after the Heaven\u2019s Gate fiasco, two films were released that helped breath enough life into the genre until it could make its triumphant return, briefly, in the early 1990\u2019s.\u00a0 Those two films were Clint Eastwood\u2019s underrated Pale Rider, and Lawrence Kasdan\u2019s Silverado which was screened at the James Bridges Theater at UCLA Friday night as part of the L.A. Film Festival.
\nTypically mythical and expansive, dwelling on a symbolic landscape, the western comes to suggest something else.\u00a0 Not so with Kasdan\u2019s Silverado which is too busy capturing the tireless action to dwell on the view.\u00a0 In this film characters are good or bad and everything is explained so the viewer does not need to spend any time trying to figure it out during or after the film.\u00a0 There is also hardly a moment to catch one\u2019s breath.\u00a0 One could easily say it is a western for those who do not typically like westerns.
\nThe film starts off with several bangs as Emmett (Scott Glenn) shoots himself out of trouble as he is ambushed by four men whose motives are yet unclear.\u00a0 Emmett soon stumbles upon Paden (Kevin Kline) who was left in the desert in his pajamas to die.\u00a0 Paden takes up with Emmet until they help out Mal (Danny Glover) who will soon return the favor.\u00a0 Next up Emmett must break his childish brother Jake (Kevin Costner) and Paden out of jail before Jake hangs the next day.\u00a0 As they ride out of town they meet up with Mal and happen upon a wagon train that has just been robbed of their life savings.\u00a0 Guess who comes to the rescue?\u00a0 All of this happens in about the first half hour.\u00a0 This should give you an idea of the frenetic pace of the film which jams every western scenario known to the genre as though it were the last western that would ever be made.\u00a0 The rest of the film has similar scrapes the characters get into including the major conflict of the film which deals with the rich land baron forcing his cattle onto the land of the new settlers and other property owners.\u00a0 There is an evil sheriff (Brian Dennehy), his crazy eyed deputy (Jeff Fahey), a saloon keeper (Linda Hunt), a pretty and single homesteader (Rosanna Arquette), and as many other western clich\u00e9 characters you can think of.
\nThe cast is uniformly excellent, but it is Kasdan\u2019s screenplay, co written with his brother Mark, which is the real star of the film.\u00a0 The situations the characters get into are fun and suspenseful and one after another, but it is the witty dialogue that makes it special and adds to the likability of the characters who each have their own unique personality with dialogue tailored to him whether it is Mal talking about what \u201cain\u2019t right,\u201d or Paden talking about \u201cbad luck.\u201d\u00a0 However, the film has its failings and they start with an overzealous music score that makes the cornball situations that much more embarrassing.\u00a0 Also, Kasdan seems to have made it a little too clear who is good and who is bad without much in the middle.\u00a0 Yet, it is all in good fun and that is really what Kasdan is going for here and succeeds in accomplishing for most of the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reviewed by Byron Potau.\u00a0 Viewed at the LA International Film Festival In 1985, with the western having been thought to be dead, especially after the Heaven\u2019s Gate fiasco, two films were released that helped breath enough life into the genre until it could make its triumphant return, briefly, in the early 1990\u2019s.\u00a0 Those two films […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-los-angeles-international-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}