Nicolas Cage has had a tendency in recent years to pick up a whole host of roles in projects good and bad. Just in the past 2 years, we’ve seen him in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Willy’s Wonderland, Prisoners of the Ghostland, Pig, and Butcher’s Crossing. Now, we see him in The Old Way. Cage’s first film of 2023, and coincidentally also the first Western in his 106-film catalog. It seems to be a recipe for a least some sort of success, given the career resurgence Cage has seen, coupled with a genre that is hard to have a true, unenjoyable dud. That’s what makes it so puzzling to see how curiously poor the film performs.
Sitting at 1 hour and 36 minutes, it would seem, at first glance, that there isn’t room for wasted space in a tightly confined runtime. Yet, that’s what is so curious about The Old Way. Its story progresses in a way that suggests runtime at least an hour longer than it really is. The film gives us the story of Colton Briggs, an outlaw turned family man who experiences a personal tragedy and sets out for revenge with his young daughter. That’s the whole concept of the entire film. It’s quite simple, which can help explain it’s short runtime. However, the main conflict of the movie doesn’t actually arise until a half hour into the film. It leaves the rest of the hour remaining to quickly tell a story and wrap things up in rapid time. There are moments throughout the film where what’s on screen feels like it is dragging on longer than it needs to or is just downright unnecessary.
It helps that the main conflict is interesting enough to keep you going, however it feels strangely familiar to other famous westerns throughout history. The retired vigilante taking up his old ways to get revenge for the death of someone close to him? That’s Unforgiven in a nutshell. Cowboy sets out on a mission with a young girl to catch the bad guys. You guessed it: True Grit is all over it. After years apart from a tragedy, a man suddenly finds himself upon the very person he swore vengeance on years earlier by pure chance while he and his gang were on a mission to accomplish something completely unrelated. That’s the extremely famous video game The Last of Us Part II. What I am getting at here is that there is quite a bit of genre and movie borrowing here, more than seems warranted for a film. And that’s just what I picked up on in my first viewing.
In addition to the story, I felt that the characters and acting, apart from Cage, who does his best to stand out, were just odd. Brigg’s Daughter Brooke, played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong, was not that strong here, and I felt that the character she was given to play was not written well either. Weird character traits plagued the characters throughout the film. Beyond that, the choices that were made by the story creators were odd. Between the insinuation of a murder-suicide and the constant “who’s side is anyone even on” struggle through the course of the film, it just kept me wondering what really happened behind the camera. By the time the end came around, I was left with more questions than answers, although the film did a good job wrapping things up nicely and in a surprisingly emotional way.
Final Thoughts
While The Old Way tended to not deliver upon the premise it was given in most situations, I still felt myself wanting to see how everything actually turned out. Nicolas Cage’s Colton Briggs is your stereotypical cowboy type without much to differentiate from other similar types, yet he played it with enough of that Nicolas Cage charm to keep me interested. At the very least, you can watch the film and get a few chuckles at some of the bad acting and dialogue. But I’m afraid if you’re looking for a unique viewing experience, you should turn to one of the myriad other Westerns out there that do it much better than this.
