Rent The Old Way (2023)

The Old Way review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

The revenge Western aspect of The Old Way does feel like a throwback, but less so for the memorable entries of the genre and more of the fat that laced the Western boom of the 1950s and 1960s. It can best be summed up in a sequence where Nicolas Cage’s character tries to convince his daughter to cry out for help as an act of deception to make the world believe you play by its rules. However, she is lousy when she tries to cry, giving a dry delivery as though she were locked in a Wes Anderson film. Even for an attempt at comedy, a scene like this feels off in a film with a rollercoaster of decent Western excitement and stumbling drama.

Cage plays Colton Briggs, a gunfighter who lived a life of violence. With his big mustache and big gun, he slaughters several men with ruthless aim. One of those who fell to his bullet was an aggravated bandit. That bandit’s son, James McAllister, watched on with sadness and rage, with the boil started for his quest for revenge. Years pass, however, and Colton has become a changed man. He has ditched the mustache for a simpler life of running a shop while attending to his wife, Ruth, and daughter, Brooke. But a gunslinger’s life is never over, and it isn’t long before McAllister and his posse target Colton. With his wife dead and home set ablaze, Colton ventures off with the young Brooke on a revenge quest of his own.

A story like this sounds fine for a revenge Western, but it’s all about the acting and direction, as with the best of the genre. Cage is fine in a Western role and never oversteps into comical territory (although the same can’t be said for other cast members). I wish Cage would go more extreme in subtly or over-the-top delivery. As it stands, he’s present in a film with a lot of ho-hum dialogue that traps him in this Goldilocks zone of a performance that comes off more vanilla than it should. The many gunfights are fine and don’t feel like they’re heavily diced up. The production design is also just fine, having the look of a Western that was made on a budget but did its best to hide the seams as well as it could.

It’s kind of a shame that the film doesn’t make better use of Cage. I’ve heard from other directors that the actor gives them the keys to his car, and it’s up to the director to steer them in a great direction. Within The Old Way, the actor is treated with an aggravating delicacy. I kept waiting for Cage to dazzle the screen with a gritty look or a vicious rant. Was there a fear he’d come off as comical? Possibly, but a great director can bring out the best in an actor. Cage hasn’t forgotten how to deliver amazing performances. Just at his astounding role in Pig, an engrossing thriller by a first-time director. If every Cage performance allowed the director to drive the Cage-mobile, this film would take the boring, safe route far from the freeway and never exceed the speed limit.

The Old Way is a forgettable revenge Western that only makes minimal effort to meet that subgenre. Rarely are there moments of profound reflection on the nature of revenge or the decay of civility in the Old West. It moseys through the usual motions with bland passages between the routine gunfights. In terms of reflecting the old ways of Westerns, this film blends into the background of the Western storm from the past and becomes more of the noise in the direct-to-video Westerns that fail to break through. There’s little reason to see this film unless you want a glimpse of Nicolas Cage with a big mustache in a Western.