Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Brett Donowho
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Noah Le Gros, Clint Howard, Kerry Knuppe, Nick
Searcy, Shiloh Fernandez
While the western may have long fallen out of favour in mainstream
Hollywood, the genre has undergone something of a minor revival over the
last decade thanks to the content hungry straight to VOD market. This
has seen the return of the B-western, as American indie filmmakers take
advantage of their country's landscape and the various rental outfits
that can kit a production out with authentic weaponry, sets and costumes
for a reasonable price. Such movies rarely boast star names, though you
might occasionally find the likes of Kiefer Sutherland of Chritian
Slater popping up on horseback, but director Brett Donowho has
landed Nicolas Cage to front his revenge western
The Old Way.
Despite having such a packed filmography, Cage has never appeared in a
western before, which tells you something about how unfashionable a
genre it is in the modern age. Here he plays a classic western
archetype, the gunslinger turned respectable citizen who finds himself
forced to load his pistol and return to the life he swore he'd leave
behind.
After a prologue that flashes back to a violent incident from the life
left behind by Cage's Colton Briggs, we find him in the film's present
where he's married with a 12-year-old daughter, the precocious Brooke
(Ryan Kiera Armstrong). One morning the surly Briggs finds
himself stuck with Brooke when it turns out her school has closed for
the day. Brooke helps out at the convenience store he runs. In a scene
that feels inspired by countless rock star anecdotes, she sorts the
jelly beans into separate jars based on individual colours.
While Briggs is minding the store, a quartet of bandits led by James
McAllister (Noah Le Gros) rocks up to his home and murders his
missus. Returning home, Briggs and Brooke find the local Marshall Jarret
(Nick Searcy) tending to the scene before warning Briggs not to
get any big ideas about taking revenge. Of course, Briggs isn't the sort
of man to leave such matters to the law, and this isn't that type of
movie, so he sets off to find McAllister, reluctantly allowing Brooke to
tag along.
What follows is a movie that feels like it's aiming for a hybrid of
Henry Hathaway's True Grit and Luc Besson's
Leon, as the initially burdensome Brooke wins over her gruff father through
her surprising gunslinging abilities and quick wits. It never quite
rises to meet its ambitions, largely down to the miscasting of Cage.
Known for his over-acting, Cage is cast as a taciturn, insular man here,
far from his strengths, and his performance is just plain odd. There's
one moment where he's allowed to let loose, going off on a rant about
how soft people succumb to tears, and it's completely out of whack with
the tone of the rest of the movie. Briggs is the sort of role that's
crying out for an actor like Kevin Costner, someone who can keep telling
and showing the audience that he's not worthy of our empathy, but who
gains it regardless through sheer force of quiet charisma. There's a
nicely written campfire monologue in which Briggs talks about how the
one thing that separates him from everyone else is that the concept of
fear is alien to him. The scene is played flatly by Cage, who doesn't
seem to understand the sort of character he's inhabiting, and you're
left to wonder how impactful it might have been if performed by a
Costner or Eastwood.
Despite Cage's flaws, The Old Way manages to be an
engaging enough b-western, the sort of movie they used to call a
"programmer." Donowho and writer Carl W. Lucas appear au fait
with this sort of fare, and they display a talent for economical
filmmaking of the sort found in the classic b-westerns of the genre's
1930s-50s golden age. When it seems we're in for the usual tired old
scene where the gunslinger teaches the kid how to shoot, Donowho
surprises us by omitting the expected shtick and simply cutting to
Brooke wearing a hat with a pair of bullet-holes. This tells us she's
mastered the art of having a good aim without making us sit through a
routine we've seen a hundred times before.
The glue that holds the film together is Armstrong's performance. There
are scenes that she rescues from Cage's somnambulist performance by
injecting an energy curiously absent from her older co-star's turn.
Ultimately it's Armstrong's film, and without making it explicit, the
young actress does enough to suggest that she knows it too.
