Browse: Home / Film on the Internet: THE WAY OF THE GUN (2000) on Amazon Prime

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login

The-SoluteLogo

A Film Site By Lovers of Film

Menu

Skip to content
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Long Reviews
  • News
  • Articles and Opinions
  • Other Media
  • Commercials You Can Hear
  • Flashback Comics Rack: Highlights of November 1970
  • Film on the Internet: DRAGONWYCK
  • Flashback Comics Rack: Highlights of October 1970
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray

Film on the Internet: THE WAY OF THE GUN (2000) on Amazon Prime

Posted By Grant Nebel ("wallflower") on May 2, 2016 in News | 104 Responses

For most movies, you don’t want to spoil the ending.  For Christopher McQuarrie’s The Way of the Gun, you don’t want to spoil the beginning.  In a recent discussion of favorite opening sequences, thesplitsaber pitched this one, and it’s great, featuring a visual joke, an elegant misdirection, a bit of foreshadowing, and it establishes right away who the protagonists really are:  “these are not good people, they do not do good things.”

The non-goodness of the protagonists (Ryan Phillippe and Benicio del Toro, and the names Phillippe gives them are another joke) turns out to be essential to what McQuarrie does here.  The Way of the Gun is a caper film (Phillipe and del Toro kidnap surrogate mother Juliette Lewis) where there’s almost no morality in play; with one possible exception, everyone acts according to self-interest.  It works, because in McQuarrie’s world, self-interest has a lot of different definitions and that leads to a fair amount of complexity in what happens, and because he illustrates as few other filmmakers have the amoral nature of ownage.  Although there are hard-drinking men, shootouts, Mexico, and the vulnerability of male and female bodies on display here, it’s that understanding that really links this film to Peckinpah’s work.  If Extreme Prejudice was Walter Hill’s take on The Wild Bunch, The Way of the Gun is McQuarrie’s version of The Getaway, a Jim Thompsonian world where mistrust is the most fundamental social interaction.

McQuarrie’s direction here has something unique and effective, especially in action sequences.  (He would go on to direct much bigger films, most recently Jack Reacher and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.)  It’s elliptical; specifically, he often omits the preludes to violence and gunplay, or he’ll frame things to leave out key pieces of information.  We’re forever catching up to the action; what just happened is clear, but what’s happening isn’t.  He’s also one of the few directors who incorporates reloading as an important part of shootouts.  Oh, and pay close attention and you’ll hear an out-of-nowhere (and fairly vicious) joke on McQuarrie’s occasional collaborator Bryan Singer.

He assembles a strong cast here too:  Phillippe’s baby face has some real menace to it–he’s like the younger, less successful brother of Val Kilmer’s character in Heat.  del Toro remains just as weird a presence as in The Usual Suspects (written by McQuarrie); Lewis was still very much on her game here; Nicky Katt and Taye Diggs are both iconic as bodyguards (Diggs’ statue-carved-out-of-obsidian look has never been scarier); and a decade and a half after Thief, James Caan remains the absolute last guy you wanna fuck with.  My favorite, though, is Scott Wilson in the Wealthy/Dangerous Guy role.  Wilson’s career ranges from In Cold Blood (1967) to The Walking Dead (2014) and it’s still going and he remains capable of delivering anything a script asks of him.  Here he can shift between kindly, smart, and lethal and keep every facet of the character in our minds at all times.  McQuarrie writes stock characters here, and he’s not trying to invest them with psychological depth so much as unpredictability.  Wilson’s perfect for that.

The Way of the Gun streams free on Amazon Prime.

Posted in News | Tagged Benicio del Toro, Christopher McQuarrie, Film on the Television, James Caan, Juliette Lewis, Nicky Katt, Ownage, Ryan Phillippe, Scott Wilson, Taye Diggs, The Way of the Gun

About the Author

luzzaschi27@aol.com'

Grant Nebel (“wallflower”)

A Silver Age (2007) commenter from the AV Club who crossed over to the Dissolve at its inception in 2013. You can follow his writings here and in the comment section at The Dissolve, and his music on his Soundcloud channel (see any Soundtracking here for that).

Related Posts

Dad to the Bone: James Williams on the JOHN WICK series→

Film on the Internet: Lydia Lomeli on KILL BILL VOL. 2→

Year of the Month: Miller on HARD TIMES→

MISBEHAVIN’: THE DRAMATIC COMEDY OF SUCCESSION & THE RIGHTEOUS GEMSTONES→

  • Comments
  • Popular
  • Most Recent
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleWonderful piece, Sam. It's made…
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleFellow heretic here. I've never…
  • n***********@gmail.com'
    Ruck Cohlchez on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEI wouldn't have called it…
  • j***********@gmail.com'
    Son of Griff on LIFE ITSELFGlad to hear back from…
  • n*********@gmail.com'
    Jake Gittes on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEThis is the single most…
  • “The End” of SAVAGES

    35461 views / Posted November 10, 2014
  • What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE

    28155 views / Posted March 19, 2015
  • The Untalented Mr. Ripley: The Craft of Standup Comedy and the Non-Comedy of TOM MYERS

    26761 views / Posted June 26, 2018
  • Gordon with Mr. Looper

    Attention Must Be Paid: Will Lee

    26630 views / Posted January 7, 2023
  • Scenic Routes: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

    20688 views / Posted November 20, 2014
  • One . . . two . . . three!

    Commercials You Can Hear

    September 27, 2023 / Gillianren
  • Flashback Comics Rack: Highlights of November 1970

    September 27, 2023 / Sam "Burgundy Suit" Scott
  • Film on the Internet: DRAGONWYCK

    September 27, 2023 / ZoeZ
  • Flashback Comics Rack: Highlights of October 1970

    September 26, 2023 / Sam "Burgundy Suit" Scott
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray

    September 26, 2023 / Greta Taylor

Last Tweets

    ©2014 - 2016 The-Solute | Hosted, Developed and Maintained by Bellingham WP LogoBellinghamWP.com.

    Menu

    • Home
    • Who We Are
    • About
    • Privacy
    • Contact Us
    • Login
    Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!