Saddle up for the ride of your life! “Silverado” 4K UHD
- Bill Kelley III
- Sep 23
- 5 min read
4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS
Lawrence Kasdan’s “Silverado” was filmed during the dead of winter in the high desert country of New Mexico. New friends Paden (Kevin Kline) and Emmett (Scott Glenn) head to the town of Turley to meet Emmett’s brother Jake (Kevin Costner).
(Click an image to scroll the larger versions)
“SILVERADO: 40th ANNIVERSARY EDITION”
4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray; 1985; PG-13 for violence and profanity; Digital copy via Amazon Video (4K), Apple TV (4K), Fandango Home (4K), Movies Anywhere (4K), YouTube (4K)
Best extra: A carryover commentary with three historians who explore co-writer/director Lawrence Kasdan’s desire to follow the lines of a classic John Ford Western.
WESTERNS HAD BECOME extinct by the 1980s, but “Silverado” gave the genre a boost with its band of young actors: Kevin Kline (Paden), Kevin Costner (Jake), Scott Glenn (Emmett) and Danny Glover (Malachi). The unlikely foursome ride into Silverado, run by Brian Dennehy (the corrupt Sheriff Cobb).
Kasden’s script is witty and adventurous, celebrating every Western trope: the ambush, the break out of jail, shootouts, saloons and gamblers, a cattle stampede, and a fantastic showdown. His smart and sharp dialogue rules, reminiscent of his earlier work on “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981).
Production began in November of 1984, four days after Thanksgiving, with a shooting schedule of 66 days, mostly at the Cook Ranch, 25 miles from Santa Fe, New Mexico. The film would require a large number of livestock including 100 horses, 500 cattle, chickens, pigs, plus 500 extras.
A construction crew of 140 built 40 buildings, working many days below freezing temperatures, to create the look of the 1880s frontier town of Silverado. Nearby Ten Rocks, Ghost Ranch, and Pecos River provided the terrain for the panoramic grandeur from cinematographer John Bailey (“In the Line of Fire,” “Ordinary People”), who was inspired by the New Mexico paintings from American modernist artist Georgia O’Keeffe.
VIDEO
Sony scanned the original 35mm camera negative in 4K, originally captured in the Super 35 format, extracting a good dose of natural film grain throughout. The composite opening title sequence still suffers from larger grain and lesser sharpness, but overall, the clarity is far superior from detailed close-ups to the vista Western landscape, compared to the previous 2K mastered Blu-ray (2009), which is included in the set.
The HDR10 and Dolby Vision grading deliver a neutral color palette with brighter and more controlled highlights, while the Blu-ray pushed an excess red/orange tint. The black levels are first-rate on the 4K, with fine detail in the shadows.
Overall, the frame is looser, with more horizontal space on the left, right, and vertically compared to the 1080p disc. The Super 35 format gave filmmakers and the studios the ability to frame the film as needed, since, in-camera, the full 4-perf image was captured. During the 1980s and ‘90s, the image was then matted optically for its theatrical run and digitally matted for this presentation.
Sony’s 4K restoration is one of their best for 2025, and this classic Western could end up in our annual Best Discs of the Year.
AUDIO
Sony produces a new high-powered Dolby Atmos soundtrack, with a rousing score from Bruce Broughton (“Tombstone”). The sound, where sharp shooting dialogue balances with blazing gunfights; were nominated for Oscars.
EXTRAS
Surprisingly, the excellent commentary track wasn’t included on the 4K, which wouldn’t have taken up much space. The featured track with film historian Frank Thompson, Western historian Paul Hutton of the University of New Mexico, and History Professor Steve Aaron of UCLA is still available on the Blu-ray, and it’s worth a listen. They all agreed Kasden’s Western is a throwback to the classic Westerns of the 1940s and ‘50s, but his cast is full of new faces, without the “grizzled old character actors” that dotted Ford classics (“The Searchers,” “Rio Bravo,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”), with the likes of Ward Bond, Harry Carey Jr., Victor McLaglen, Ken Curtis, Hank Worden, and Ben Johnson.
The outstanding supporting cast for “Silverado” included Rosanna Arquette (Hannah), John Cleese (Sheriff Langston), Jeff Goldblum (Slick), Linda Hunt (Stella), and Lynn Whitfield (Rae).
Two ported featurettes from the original DVD include:
“A Return to Silverado with Kevin Costner” (21 mins.), who recalls lessons learned watching Kasdan – which he later applied to his own projects, Academy Award winner “Dances with Wolves” and “Open Range.” He also remembers as a seven-year-old seeing the Cinerama presentation of “How the West was Won” (1962). As a youngster, the Westerns he saw “didn’t speak to me. They weren’t very good,” he thought at the time. But, as a young actor, he was drawn to Kasden’s themes and ideas for Silverado, “that actually tied into you,” he said.
The two first worked together on “The Big Chill” (1983), but Costner’s performance as Alex was cut. The assembled cast comes together for his funeral.
“The Making of Silverado” (37 mins.) showcases the production filmed in the high country of New Mexico, where he fell in love with the light, “like I had never seen before.” Kasdan and his older brother Mark, who co-wrote “Silverado” and co-wrote “Horizon: An American Saga” with Costner, knew they wanted to make a Western. “We wanted to remind people of the pleasure that we had growing up seeing Westerns,” the director says.
“I loved the terrain, the country, the way it looked, the horses, the guns, the costumes, the cowboys, the issues that come up in Westerns. I love the heroic figures that cowboys can represent as gunslingers and I love everything about the vitality of that period in our history.” – Co-writer/director Lawrence Kasdan
The late Chicago Sun-Times & “At the Movies” film critic Roger Ebert said, “This movie is more sophisticated and complicated than the Westerns of my childhood, and it is certainly better looking and better acted.”
Don’t miss this All-American classic.
— Bill Kelley III, High-Def Watch producer
Silverado Showdown
SPECS:
100 GB disc
TRUE 4K mastering
35mm 3-perf Super Techniscope (Super 35) format, 2.39:1 aspect ratio
Video bitrate: Varies from the low 60 Megabits per second to 80 Mbps. A running time of 133 minutes.
HDR10 maximum light level: 1495 nits
Max frame average light level: 837 nits
·Box office: $32 million domestically, with a production budget of $26 million. Finished the year as the No. 25 box office film of the year with 9.3 million tickets sold. “Back to the Future” was No. 1 with 54.4 million tickets sold.
Academy Awards: Two nominations Best Score, and Best Sound.
Rotten Tomatoes: Critics – 78 percent, Moviegoers - 79 percent
Metacritic: 64 percent, User Score 7.5
