Silverado-Collector's Edition

Silverado was Lawrence and Mark Kasdans attempt to bring the old westerns to a new audience. Lawrence Kasdan is best known by Star Wars fans worldwide for his work on The Empire Strikes Back. He had a marked influence on the script being one of the main writers involved in the project. It's often argued that he made the movie what it is. As for Silverado, you won't find any lightsabers or Jedi in this, just your typical goodies and baddies.

We begin the movie with Emmett (Scott Glenn) involved in a shoot out with an unknown number of attackers. It's not initially clear why the attack occured so we move onto Emmett coming across Paden (Kevin Kline) left for dead in his underwear in the middle of the desert. Emmett helps him, takes him into town where Paden recovers his belongings and horse, with the help of an old friend named Cobb (Brian Dennehy). The plot seems to jump around here, with no clear direction at all. We meet up with Emmett's brother, Jake (Kevin Costner), in prison for murder. Paden ends up in Jail too - Paden and Jake break out - Paden, Jake and Emmett leave the town - Paden, Jake, Emmett and Mal get together and head off for Silverado. Mal (Danny Glover) was kicked out of the local saloon for being black; I should have mentioned this earlier but things just seemed to jump around and I've forgotten most of the plot.

Moving on, when the group arrive in Silverado, Paden soon finds out that Cobb is actually Sherrif Cobb and not a good Sherrif at that. Emmett's sisters family is harrassed by Cobb's men and her husband is shot in the raucus that ensues. Hang on, did I miss something back then? *Splashes water into eyes to clear his head* Anyway, the whole gang encounter their own battles, Mal losing his father, and in the end there is a shoot out between Cobb and Paden. Who wins? Well, let me just say that none of our heroes die.

I'll leave my overall assesment for later. A gold star to stick in your scrap book for anyone who can guess how I felt about this movie. :)

This is a decade old movie and it shows. Being a western, the most you'll get out this movie is brown browns and yellow fires with a smattering of clear blue sky and white/brown/black horses. All in all, it looks good yet it still feels dated.

The transfer seems to suffer from a source perspective, i.e. what goes in is what comes out. It is sharp most of the way through the movie, only let down by some cave scenes and other evening shots. I could be really harsh on the transfer but I won't as I don't think it's the fault of the transfer at all.

Overall, the color is less saturated than what you have already seen on some of the great looking transfers so don't expect anything amazing. It's decent, but not great.

It seems the audio suffered the source dilemma. One thing I noticed was the dialogue was inconsistent throughout the movie. I had to up the center channel and had to live with the low sections being fine and then the high sections being loud. Atleast I could hear everything now.

Environment wise, you're not getting much out of the surrounds at all. I am not sure if this is a true 5.1 remix or just the original audio track encoded over 5.1 channels. (Yes there is a difference). What is noticeably vibrant is the musical score. I guess this is where the 5.1 soundtrack comes into play here as the soundfield does open up on these occasions.

Overall, nothing to write home about.

• Featurette - The Making of Silverado
  A 30 minute plus look at the making of the film. It's very insightful into the goings of the production.
• Cast/Crew Filmographies

Ok, if you guessed that I didn't enjoy this film, you guessed right. I don't know what it is, maybe it was the style or just tha it was a western, but then again, I enjoyed Tombstone immensly. The way the plot jumped around was the annoying part. It wasn't fluid enough. it felt like their was a directors cut somewhere that filled in the gaps. Not one of my favorites.