Day 30 Silverado (1985)

This selection is maybe the film I have seen the most from the list of movies from this project. It is an attempt to make the western genre more appealing to an audience with Indiana Jones as their action touchstone. It comes from Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote Raiders and made “Body Heat” which I covered a couple of weeks ago. So it may be a little different than a traditional western, but it still has most of the tropes of the genre. There are saloon fights, ranchers being run off by bigger fish, shootouts in the street, there is a jail break and an encounter with robbers. It all the stuff that these sorts of films are remembered for.

What makes this film so much fun, besides the cast we will talk about in a minute, is the razor sharp dialogue and clever moments in the story.  Most of the wise guy lines come from Kevin Kline’s mouth. His character Paden is a drifter who has been robbed and left abandoned in the desert.  He is rescued by Emmett played by Scott Glenn in another Cowboy role, quite different from his turn in “Urban Cowboy “. Here he is one of the good guys.  Along the way they pick up Jake, Emmett’s brother, played by Kevin Costner in a star making turn. Costner’ s introduction is all nervous energy and bravado.  He’s like a kid with ADD in a jail cell.  They are shortly joined by Danny Glover’s Mal, who is ill treated as a black man in the West. Mal has a line of dialogue we have quoted in this house at least weekly since 1985, “That ain’t right,  I’ve had enough  of what ain’t right.”

What follows are a series of adventures and confrontations that come fast and furious.  Each new wrinkle is usually accompanied by a new actor who brings something different to the story.  John Cleese joins Kleine a couple of years before they team on “A Fish Called Wanda”, he is a misplaced Englishmen who is a sheriff. Diminutive Linda Hunt is an unlikely bar keeper, Jeff Goldblum is a gambler, and Brian Denehey is the crooked lawman who links everyone together.  Richard Jenkins has a blink and you’ll miss him part, it was his first. 

The plot isn’t really important,  let’s just say, the four new friends,  collectively face off against the bad guys. Some of our heroes are bushwacked,  there are quirky background stories and motivations, the bad guys get revealed, and the mayhem gets upped. There are fires and jailbreak, some double crosses, a stampede and gunfight in the street.

One other feature that makes this film terrific is the score. There is a wonderful theme and it is used in just the right places. The incidental music is also solid. The score has a sense of Americana to it that ,makes it feel authentically western despite contemporary technique.  This is Amanda’s second favorite film,  “Paden” is the name she gave her dog.

Day 18 Body Heat 1981

Time has not been especially kind to the looks of the stars of this film. All of us age so there is no shame in that, but most of us remember ourselves at our peak and reminisce about that moment when we were at our best and our sexuality was at it’s apex. William Hurt and Kathleen Turner do not have to search their brains for fragments of those times, they are all right here for everyone to see in this movie.

This was Kathleen Turner’s debut film and only the third feature of William Hurt. It is also the directing debut of Lawrence Kasdan, and it happens to be one of the greatest neo noir films ever made. The parallels with a classic noir like “Double Indemnity” are inescapable. There is a femme fatale, a bright but not too bright sexually addled male lead, and a complicated plot that involves murder, betrayal and enough cynicism to satisfy even a teenager. This film had the advantage of being made in the modern era, so the frank depiction of sensuality adds to the lurid allure of the story, but does so without being exploitive.

Maybe half the success of carrying off the tone of this movie can be attributed to the great composer John Barry, who created a jazz based romance ballad, with the occasional punctuation of staccato style piano. You will hear much the same style years later in Jerry Goldsmith’s score for L.A. Confidential. It feels old fashioned but also sexy in a contemporary way. The mood is enhanced by the languid pace of the tune and the slow reveals of each step in the plot process. Nothing in this film feels rushed, and the music keeps that tempo throughout.

Ned Racine, a lawyer with more libido than smarts, falls under the spell of lonely trophy wife Maddie Walker. The sexual crescendo that signifies their breaking the line is fast, but it is a result of a slow seduction by both parties. Maddie resists just enough, but Ned finally can’t control his desire and she is equally committed to the physical link they share. The move to committing a murder is equally slow, following hints of abuse by her husband, signs of vast wealth, and a slow growth of greed on the part of Maddie. Still it is Ned who first says it out loud, not even realizing how he is being manipulated by sex. One more slow burn in the story is the dawning of a betrayal by one partner in crime. It takes several steps before the victim is completely convinced of the knife placed in their back by their partner.

The supporting cast is also stellar, headed by venal Richard Crenna, a lawyer who has made making money the most important thing in his life. Ted Danson is Ned’s sympathetic friend who also happens to be a deputy district attorney. His dancing lawyer is full of equivocations at the end of the plot, and his moral ambiguity helps keep Ned a more sympathetic character, despite comitting a murder. We also see a police detective, who likes Ned, begin to unravel the story that his friend is telling. Mickey Rourke is only in two scenes but he is electric in both of them.

Every other element would not work as well if the female lead wasn’t perfect, and she is. This movie made Turner a star. Her long legs, husky voice and insouciant manner are all just right for the part. Kasdan, who was also the screenwriter, created a multi layered plot, which combines all of the traditional elements of noir, with a legal twist and a reversal of roles that makes this a terrific film. Of course if you are a health nut, you might want to avoid the film because there is so much smoking in it, you could get lung cancer just from watching. Still, it’s worth the risk.