If there’s one actor who has long left behind him The Old Way preferring to plough his own furrow like no actor ever has, it’s Nicolas Cage. He’s been doing it for decades with possibly the first hint that he was going off road was probably in Face Off where his villain gets ever more bonkers and Travolta who was assuming the Cage persona in his performance seemed to be gleefully going full tile boogie when impersonating Cage. In Fairness Cage seemed only too aware of his unhinged performances and sent himself up in ‘The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’ a film with such a title that, if nothing else, would assure audiences it would never star Amanda Holden. In The Old Way, Cage is a ruthless gun slinging bounty hunter Colton Briggs who collects the bounty on a wanted man who is about to be hung by another bunch of ne’er do wells. But when they try to rescue the convicted man is about to be hung Colton kills the whole lot of them one of which is in front of the now dead man’s son. It is quite literally frontier justice
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Twenty years later Colton is now a married man with a young teenage daughter and wife having left his old way behind him choosing instead to embrace family life. But his past life soon catches up with him when he is away on business and the now grown up son of the man he shot comes for vengeance. So when Colton returns home only to be met by the local sheriff to break the bad news that his wife is dead its certain that it is unlikely that Colton is going shrug it off as a hazard of the job. So, with his daughter in tow he goes hunting for the men who killed his wife.
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The Old Way is one of those man seeking vengeance thrillers but set in the cowboy genre and there’s elements of several Clint Eastwood lone man killer out for justice and there’s a hint of Luc Besson’s classic ‘Leon’ thrown in for good measure as Colton teaches his daughter how to use a gun and defend herself. There’s little new here but its message that violence begets violence and solves nothing is relevant for modern times. The novelty here is that having been in just about every genre of film this is the first time that Cage has been in a western which is some feat for someone with a back catalogue of over 100 films it’s just a shame that this is a little bit run of the mill and we’d have loved to see him appear in one with Clint Eastwood.
Here’s The Old Way trailer……
In cinemas & available on Altitude.film & other digital platforms 3th January
