The
Way of the Gun
Rated
R
Opens Friday,
Sept. 8
The Way of
the Gun was written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie,
who won an Oscar for his Usual Suspects screenplay.
James Caan co-stars
in The Way of the Gun.
Someone is going to get upset, there's no doubt about that.
Whether it's misguided reactionaries who want to blame film
violence for crazed kids blowing each other away or it's
the callow fans of Quentin Tarantino who mistakenly think
he invented hardboiled cinematic brutality, someone is going
to shit a brick sideways over the directorial debut of Usual
Suspects scribe Christopher McQuarrie.
With blood-red shades of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch
and Arthur Penn's Bonnie & Clyde, McQuarrie's
The Way of the Gun explodes on the screen with a
violent brutality seldom seen in recent films. It's an unrepentant
bloodbath of a film that revels in its moral ambiguity.
But more importantly, Gun marks the long-awaited
return of shamelessly corrupt protagonists that have been
absent from film for the better part of a decade.
Parker (Ryan Phillippe) and Longbaugh (Benicio Del Toro)
are two career criminals who are looking to make a big score
but, in the meantime, are reduced to making money by selling
their sperm. When they catch wind of Robin (Juliette Lewis),
a surrogate mother carrying the child of a wealthy couple,
a kidnapping plan unfolds. But they run into more than they
bargained for with Jeffers (Taye Diggs) and Obecks (Nicky
Katt), Robin's cold-blooded bodyguards. With Robin in tow--and
days away from giving birth--Parker and Longbaugh find themselves
locked in a deadly battle and caught in a web of double
crosses, hidden agendas and secret allegiances.
Less informed film geeks out there will view Way of
the Gun as one of the many Tarantino ripoffs to come
along in the wake of Reservoir Dogs--or, worse, a
wannabe Natural Born Killers. Gun is far more
than that, fusing elements--and drawing inspiration--from
the film noir of the '40s and the revisionist violence of
the '60s and '70s. From the names Parker (crime novelist
extraordinaire Donald Westlake's most enduring character)
and Longbaugh (the Sundance Kid's real name) to the blood-splattered
showdown in a Mexican villa--straight outta Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid--Gun is an unflinching homage
to the anti-hero.
The greatest film protagonists have been those whose only
redeeming value is that they are the least vile and corrupt
people a story has to offer. Take Ray Liotta in GoodFellas.
Far from a sympathetic hero, Liotta's Henry Hill is not
a traditional good guy, but he's surrounded by people far
worse, making him, by default, the character the audience
sympathizes with.
But in recent years political correctness and the backlash
of high-minded moralists have resulted in watered-down anti-heroes
like Nicolas Cage's in Gone in 60 Seconds. Even worse,
filmmakers now try to justify unjustifiable behavior, as
in American Psycho. The result are characters we
don't really care about and whose ultimate redemption or
damnation is inconsequential.
Way of the Gun is not a perfect film, and the violence
will leave some people unsettled--as will Lewis' typically
whiny performance--and at times the story becomes convoluted
and choppy. But for those who like to cheer on the bad guys,
the movie delivers like a double-barrel shotgun blast.
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