Popcorn Western Friday: Silverado (1985)

What’s it about?

A misfit bunch of friends comes together to right the injustices which exist in a small town.

Who’s in it?

What a cast! Scott Glenn, Kevin Kline, Rosanna Arquette, Brian Dennehy, Jeff Fahey, Kevin Costner, Danny Glover, Lynn Whitfield, Joe Seneca, John Cleese, Linda Hunt, Jeff Goldblum. Here we have Danny Glover an Mal, an expert with a Henry Rifle, who meets the rest of the good guys while returning to Silverado at the request of his mother, to help the family secure their home from the local cattle baron. What’s interesting here is how the film, as light as it is, has its most headiest story with Mal, and the racism that comes with a Black family owning their own land, and his sister, Rae, played by Lynn Whitfield, as a woman tired of the farm life and goes to work at the local saloon. What’s interesting here is that both brother and sister wanted to lead lives away from farm life, with interesting unintended consequences for those actions. Extra props to longtime actor Joe Seneca as the father Ezra. He wasn’t in the film long but left and impression. In a great, light western there was a serious story of a Black family trying to come back together. Glover, Whitfield and Seneca could have had their characters’ story told as a completely separate movie and it would’ve been great!