Throwback Thursday: ‘The Way of the Gun’

Okay, so maybe it’s not all that much of a “Throwback” to talk about a film that came out in 2000.  However, after running into Sarah Silverman and James Caan (God, that man just couldn’t be cooler) at CineVegas this past week, and hearing James from Gordon and the Whale talk to them about ‘The Way of the Gun,’ I felt it was time to go back and check the film out again.  And, if you’ve never seen it, then shame on you for being a lover of action.

‘The Way of the Gun’ is a modern day Western from writer/director Christopher McQuarrie.  After winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for ‘The Usual Suspects,’ McQuarrie felt it was time for Hollywood to take notice at what he really had to offer.  Unfortunately, as McQuarrie puts it, “you slowly start to realize no one in Hollywood is interested in making your film, they’re interested in making their films.”

It would be five years before ‘The Usual Suspects’ co-star, Benicio Del Toro, would convince him to write another crime story, this time holding back nothing and writing it specifically for himself.  The gritty and brilliant ‘The Way of the Gun’ is what emerged.

Part Western, part drama, a little touch of comedy, and a whole truckload of bullets, ‘The Way of the Gun’ feels much like the type of films Sam Peckinpah would have made had he not died 16 years prior.  There is a whole lot of grit in the action and characters alike.  There really isn’t any character that you whole-heartedly root for.  The film’s two leads, only known as Parker and Longbaugh (the real-life last names of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), are played by Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro, respectively.   You know from the film’s immediate and wholly memorable opening, which also features the aforementioned Ms. Silverman and her beautiful grasp for vulgarity, where these two guys are coming from.

For those of you who don’t know, ‘The Way of the Gun’ is a film about a kidnapping.  Parker and Longbaugh are career criminals who are looking for the next score.  They find it in the surrogate mother of a wealthy and Mafia-connected couple.  Parker and Longbaugh kidnap the surrogate, played by Juliette Lewis, and demand $15 million for her release.  It isn’t before loo long that all Hell breaks loose on the film’s characters.  It continues to break loose time and time again from there on out.  Nicky Katt and Taye Diggs play the bodyguards of the kidnapped girl.  James Caan plays the kidnapped girl’s veteran mobster father.

‘The Way of the Gun’ is one of those gritty actioners that comes along every so often where everything in the film just works to perfection.  Everything from McQuarrie’s complex but never confusing screenplay to the brilliant gun fight scenes choreographed by McQuarrie’s Navy SEAL brother to even the more dramatic moments where bullets slow down and dialogue picks up works.  Every one of the actors involved plays the Hell out of their respective roles, as well.

Up until this time, Ryan Phillippe had been known mostly as the pretty boy from ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ and ‘Cruel Intentions,’ another forgotten gem.  It was with his incredible acting and stunning reading of McQuarrie’s dialogue that really made movie geeks all over the world sit up and take notice.  Del Toro didn’t need ‘The Way of the Gun’ to prove to everyone how friggin’ cool he was.  We all pretty much knew it.  This film just restated that fact.

Taye Diggs and Nicky Katt also give great performances.  As the two bodyguards who screw up watching a pregnant woman, their roles could have easily been throwaway characters that get plugged full of bullets early on without much mention.  However, McQuarrie makes real characters out of these two, even sparking some lines of connection between them and other players in the film.  By the end, you truly care about these two fleshed out characters.   McQuarrie’s writing and the performances by Diggs and Katt aid in this fact.

What more can you say about Caan.  The man is a legend, and he gets some of the best lines of dialogue in a screenplay that is endlessly quotable.

“Karma’s justice without the satisfaction.  I don’t believe in justice,” he says to the aged gangster whose unborn baby has been kidnapped.

“The only thing you can guess about a broken old man is that he is a survivor,” he later tells Longbaugh, as they are negotiating the trade-off between the money and the girl.

Just copying these lines of dialogue from McQuarrie’s script gives me chills.   He is such a gifted writer when it comes to cool, lasting dialogue, and it excites me to see that he is writing and directing a new film, ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment,’ for a scheduled release sometime later this year.   This upcoming film tells the true story from 1971 previously told in the 2001 Oliver Hirschbiegel film, ‘Das Experiment.’

Back to ‘Way of the Gun.’

The final gun fight at a secluded, Mexican brothel features some of the most breathtaking uses of camera movement seen in recent memory.  One particular shot that wraps itself around a centralized well as Parker and Longbaugh are fending off Mafia hitmen from all sides is nothing short of perfection.

I could go on and on about how excellent ‘The Way of the Gun’ is, but the outcome is always going to be the same.  If you haven’t seen it, you must.  If you have seen it, see it again.  I guarantee you there are moments you’ve forgotten about or aspects of the film you never even noticed before.  It truly is an amazing film, an incredibly crafted film, and I am not ashamed to say that I believe it to be one of the best action films of all time.

“Until that day.”