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22 December 2023
\"The longest distance between two points is a kidnapper and his money.\"
\"Are you the brains of this operation, or is he?\"
\"To tell you the truth, I don\'t think this is a \'brains\' kind of operation.\"
The Way Of The Gun opens with our \"heroes\", Parker (Ryan Phillippe) and Longbaugh (Benicio Del Toro), faced with a mob of angry bar patrons. (I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the main characters\' names are the real names of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.) They know they are going to get the shit beat out of them, so they do the maximum damage they can in their situation: they punch the girlfriends of their enemies. They are going to lose, so they make sure that the men who beat them up will hear about that fight for the rest of their lives.
That is just one of many off-kilter sequences that sets The Way Of The Gun apart from every other thriller you’ve ever seen.
Brilliantly written and directed by The Usual Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie, it’s a caper film in the very finest tradition of Quentin Tarantino and David Mamet. McQuarrie proves to be a master of suspense, keeping you sweating and guessing through the entire thing. The car chase with Nicky Katt and Taye Diggs following Parker and Longbaugh after they kidnap Juliette Lewis has to be one of the best ever committed to celluloid. Not because it takes the same fast squealing path as every other film, but because of the pauses, the tension, the danger of the situation.
This is a smart movie, where the violence is brutally painful and anything could happen. There are consequences for every action, and everyone has their own agenda. There are amazingly quiet but equally intense scenes where Longbaugh has a drink with an old school bagman while they talk about what’s wrong with today’s criminals, or the scene with the kidnappers and Juliette Lewis where her whole character is explained by the rules of a card game.
Having never been a Phillippe fan, I was surprised by how damn good he was in this flick, and Del Toro is amazing as always. There are a lot of really great, intense performances in these roles, spectacular writing and directing, a score that sticks in your head for weeks after, and an overall feel to The Way Of The Gun that you just don’t find in movies very often, if at all.
\"Are you the brains of this operation, or is he?\"
\"To tell you the truth, I don\'t think this is a \'brains\' kind of operation.\"
The Way Of The Gun opens with our \"heroes\", Parker (Ryan Phillippe) and Longbaugh (Benicio Del Toro), faced with a mob of angry bar patrons. (I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the main characters\' names are the real names of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.) They know they are going to get the shit beat out of them, so they do the maximum damage they can in their situation: they punch the girlfriends of their enemies. They are going to lose, so they make sure that the men who beat them up will hear about that fight for the rest of their lives.
That is just one of many off-kilter sequences that sets The Way Of The Gun apart from every other thriller you’ve ever seen.
Brilliantly written and directed by The Usual Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie, it’s a caper film in the very finest tradition of Quentin Tarantino and David Mamet. McQuarrie proves to be a master of suspense, keeping you sweating and guessing through the entire thing. The car chase with Nicky Katt and Taye Diggs following Parker and Longbaugh after they kidnap Juliette Lewis has to be one of the best ever committed to celluloid. Not because it takes the same fast squealing path as every other film, but because of the pauses, the tension, the danger of the situation.
This is a smart movie, where the violence is brutally painful and anything could happen. There are consequences for every action, and everyone has their own agenda. There are amazingly quiet but equally intense scenes where Longbaugh has a drink with an old school bagman while they talk about what’s wrong with today’s criminals, or the scene with the kidnappers and Juliette Lewis where her whole character is explained by the rules of a card game.
Having never been a Phillippe fan, I was surprised by how damn good he was in this flick, and Del Toro is amazing as always. There are a lot of really great, intense performances in these roles, spectacular writing and directing, a score that sticks in your head for weeks after, and an overall feel to The Way Of The Gun that you just don’t find in movies very often, if at all.
artid
2953
Old Image
7_6_way.jpg
issue
vol 7 - issue 06 (feb 2005)
section
entertainmental