From my favorite movies..

It is so daring, it is so ambitious, it is so thrilling and weird and pointed and powerful. I never knew where it was going.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This is the type of western that you can rewatch several times and find something new --not only is the cast of the chart, but the acting, the dialogue, the humor, the good writing makes it an outstanding movie.

Four cowboys meet by happenstance in the Western wilderness, have lots of fun, and then are subject to serious transgressions by a corrupt sheriff and some evil cattlemen. Kline, Glenn, Costner, and Glover are the initially happy travelers. Their characters' names are Padem, Emmet, Jake, and Mal. I conducted a scholarly study of cowboy names of the period and not one of them had a name like Padem, Emmet, Jake, Mal, Matt, Link, Ringo, Jesse, Clay, or Latigo. As a matter of fact, the four most common names were Governeur, Montmorency, Noble, and Bolingbroke. The results can be found in "Onomastics of the Post Civil War American West," readily available in the back of the bottom shelf of my grand garçon, never published and never will be.The movie? It starts out kind of fun. Costner is a light-hearted young man and a dead shot. You'd have difficulty imagining him in his later roles. Danny Glover is a dead shot too, with his Henry rifle. In fact they're all dead shots and fast draws except the bad guys who are uniformly slow and ragged in their aim. Linda Hunt has a rather prominent role as a saloon manager. She was born with hypopituitary dwarfism but is a fine actress and actually looks pretty good here. Ben Goldman is an overdressed professional gambler, a sneak who sides with Brian Dennehy, the corrupt sheriff, although how and why he does so, only the editor knows. A few laughs and action aplenty without bath tubs of gore. All the usual conventions of the genre are adhered to. It's diverting and sometimes fun.

A misfit bunch of friends come together to right the injustices which exist in a small town.The western genre is not something I grew up with or really cared much for, bu it is starting to grow on me. And films like this help a lot, because it is somewhat unconventional and has an excellent cast. Some of these guys were huge, or just on the verge of being huge. And then casting John Cleese as a sheriff... an Englishman in the Old West? I do wish there had been more Jeff Goldblum, and the ladies never get a lot of screen time. This could have been a big film for Amanda Wyss, but we barely get to see her. At least we have Scott Glenn, who really ought to be a bigger name than he ever was.

This all-star American western of the 1980s appears to be quite divisive on the site, but I thought it was great fun. It does have something of a TV movie atmosphere to it - you just know that it's never going to be too violent or too dark, but rather quite family-friendly - but the plot is good enough to keep you interested and the cast is excellent. Director Lawrence Kasdan injects plenty of life into the proceedings and despite the lengthy running time I was never less than intrigued by the story.The early parts of the film introduce the main characters in their own sub-plots. Hard-man Scott Glenn attempts to look after his precocious younger brother, played by Kevin Costner in a very youthful, slightly annoying turn. Danny Glover is a brooding hero type, coming home to his family after years away. Kevin Kline, best known for a career in comedy, is surprisingly efficient as the expert gunslinger. Others, like Brion James and Rosanna Arquette, don't really have much to do, although Linda Hunt is very good in her smaller part. John Cleese is miscast but thankfully not around too long.The story comes and goes and even during the middle part, where the action scenes are in short supply, I was entertained. Brian Dennehy's larger than life sheriff character helps a lot and seems like he's been imported from FIRST BLOOD. The latter part of the film and climax play out exactly as you'd expect, but the action is well shot and exciting, and the cinematography makes this a gorgeous-looking experience. Overall, I found very little to dislike about it, and in actuality I loved it.