YMMV / Silverado

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• Awesome Music: Bruce Broughton's score fits perfectly with the idea of reconstructing the Western genre after two decades of deconstruction. It's epic, sweeping, and triumphant.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Sheriff John Langston. It’s kind of inevitable when you’re played by John Cleese.
• Ham and Cheese: Brion James only appear in a few scenes, but he makes the most of it with a gloriously hammy performance.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The moment where Paden is calmly standing still while loading his gun and aiming, amid his adversary firing quickly and wildly at him—and missing—anticipates Unforgiven's famous Deconstruction of Fastest Gun in the West by seven years.
  • When J.T. breaks free and overpowers one of McKendrick's men, the lower half of his face is still covered by a bandanna, anticipating the identifying character trait of Earl Hindman's best-known character by six years.
• Moral Event Horizon: "Emmitt... They took the little boy." Cue Roaring Rampage of Revenge
  • Tyree's casual shooting of a dog appears to have been this for Paden, causing him to abandon the outlaw life.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Not exactly one scene, but John Cleese's minor role as a straight-laced and overly authoritarian British sheriff in a western town is often cited as a highlight.
  • Brion James as the gloriously hammy leader of a group of pioneers shows up in about three scenes, probably because had he been in more of the film he would have devoured all of the scenery.
  • James Gammon as a clever, Deadpan Snarker bandit leader.
• Retroactive Recognition: At the time of the film’s release Scott Glenn, Keven Kline, Rosanna Arquette, Jeff Goldblum and Linda Hunt had only had a few notable roles between them and were hardly Household Names. Danny Glover and Kevin Costner were unknown. John Cleese was a huge star in Great Britain but only had a cult following in North America. Brian Dennehy was probably the most recognizable actor at the time.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Ezra Johnson's murder
  • Paden and Cobb's final confrontation. Old friends who grew in opposite directions, they nevertheless remain friendly and cordial toward each other even as it becomes clear that either one or both of them will be dead by the end of this. When the time finally comes to draw down, they regard each other sadly before exchanging final goodbyes, knowing that it was finally the end of the line, and either they or their old friend would not be walking away with their life.
  Cobb: Goodbye, Paden.
  Paden: Goodbye, Cobb.

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