Silver City | | Cast : | Chris Cooper, Thora Birch, Maria Bello | | Director : | John Sayles | | Studio : | Columbia Tristar Hom | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | September 17, 2004 | | DVD Released Date : | January 11, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 13, 2005 | | Summary | Not so silver | Content
 | Silver city was an ok political satire. Cooper is great as a Bush like Colorado gubernatorial candidate, and the private looks a little too much like Jeb Bush. The movie just isnt that funny and the satire is not that great. At times I felt bored. I was expecting more entertainment, especially since I'm not too fond of the right wingers. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 11, 2005 | | Summary | Possibly the best movie of '04 | Content
| Silver City is another excellent movie from a director who has been focusing on an important topic for a while now: America. Not many people are willing to really explore and examine this topic for what it is because of its sordidness and complexities, and this movie deals with quite a few of those complexities: inarticulate politicans ready to bow down to corporate business and forget about everything else, immigration problems, environmental concerns, capitalism versus democracy, intelligence versus greed, you name it. Silver City offers excellent performances, great characters, and one meaningful scene after another, as well as a lot of Cowboy Junkies songs. Perhaps what makes this movie somewhat difficult for certain people is this: It makes you think. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 04, 2005 | | Summary | Sayles' political satire | Content
| In John Sayles' latest, Chris Cooper plays Dicky Pilager, running for governor of Colorado and with more than a passing resemblance to George W. Bush. When Dicky finds a corpse while filming a campaign ad, his campaign manager (Richard Dreyfuss) hires investigator Danny O'Brien (Danny Huston) to find out if the corpse was planted. Danny, of course, gets into trouble as he uncovers family secrets and business deals.
This is a terrific cast but the pacing is very slow and the mystery is only mildly interesting. Iwould have liked to have seen Chris Cooper more.
Extras include a trailer, a 36-minute making-of featurette and a commentary track. Subtitles available in English.
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| Rating | | | Date | April 19, 2005 | | Summary | The movie trailer was almost as misleading as Bush himself | Content
| I first saw the trailer...somewhere. It looked like it was going to be a political satire about someone. Then I heard nothing more about this movie so I assumed it was scrapped at some point or went straight to DVD. But then I saw it at the video store one day and picked it up. I watched this movie and absolutely fell in love with the fact that I threw away 5 bucks for the rental. I was so hyped by the trailer that I was gonna purchase it once I saw it for sale. So a waste of 5 dollars is better than 20+. I watched the movie hoping it was gonna take off and go somewhere. But it didn't. It started down the runway and then decided it forgot to refuel before takeoff, so it turned around and became a Pinto hatchback.
Now that I have rambled on about how bad it was, let me tell you why it was so bad. "It just was." That three-word review is about as clear as the movie's plot. I couldn't tell if it was supposed it to be a satire/comedy...a suspenseful thriller...or a two hour plus movie with an ensemble cast who apparently lost a bet or had chimps for agents. Anyway, no one will find this review helpful, but know this one thing: I may have saved you anywhere from 5-20+ dollars...which is helpful You are welcome.
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| Rating | | | Date | April 15, 2005 | | Summary | Watching an axe being ground isn't necessarily entertainment | Content
| Based on his past performances, I have a high regard for actor Chris Cooper. So, how bad can a film starring Cooper be? Well, ...
Actually, Cooper's role in SILVER CITY is relatively minor as he plays Dickie Pilager, the dufus son of Colorado's senior senator running for that state's governorship. The film initially captures interest as Dickie snags a corpse with his fishing lure during a photo op at a mountain lake. The candidates handler, Chuck Raven (Richard Dreyfuss), immediately suspects his man is being set-up and hires private eye Danny O'Brien (Danny Huston) to investigate the opposition. From here on, the film slides into a boring and cynical visual rant against the unholy alliance of right-wing politicians, environmental polluters, corrupt land developers, and coyotes that smuggle illegal - i.e. "undocumented" according to the Politically Correct - migrant workers for the benefit of Big Agrabusiness. One suspects that writer/director/editor John Sayles is drawing a parallel between the senior Pilager and son Dickie and George Bush, Sr. and Dubya. Ok, fine. Whatever. But even the tenuous thread of a murder mystery - who killed the guy in the lake - can't make this movie interesting, especially as it grinds on for over two excruciating hours.
There is perhaps only one performance worth watching, that of the free-spirited and sexually liberated Madeleine Pilager (Daryl Hannah), Dickie's black sheep sister, who wields a mean bow and arrow and can expertly shaft campaign pictures of her detested sibling.
My biggest problem with SILVER CITY was that the various characters, with the possible exception of Madeleine, were unappealing and unengaging, and, though the mechanism by which the bod got into the water is eventually revealed, it portends nothing more than a whole lot of dead fish. Nobody is brought to justice, if indeed there was ever much of a crime to begin with. And if the viewer is left with a heightened perception of political (read "Republican") banality and venality, so what? After 55 years in these United States and the world in general, those are attributes I can ascribe to politicians of any and every stripe.
I watched SILVER CITY over my microwaved dinner hoping to be entertained at the end of a typically uninspiring 9 to 5 workday - and wasn't. How perfect is that?
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