Fascinée par l'echographie sur l'écran

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Another future classic from Christopher McQuarrie!

Author: Infofreak from Perth, Australia
8 January 2002

Look I love 'The Usual Suspects' as much as the next guy, and think it's one of the few movies of the 1990s that can truly be considered a classic. But I think comparing that movie to 'The Way Of The Gun' (Christopher McQuarrie wrote both and directs this in an impressive debut) is unproductive and misguided. Both movies feature criminal anti-heroes and tricky plot twists, but in different ways, and are very different in approach and theme. McQuarrie isn't repeating himself here, this is something new. Something that has more in common with Sam Peckinpah than the plethora of shallow post-Tarantino rip-offs Hollywood has foisted on us in recent years.

The basic premise is fairly straightforward - two losers "Parker" (A surprisingly effective Ryan Phillipe in easily his best role to date) and "Longbaugh" (the always excellent Benicio Del Toro), cook up a half baked scheme to kidnap a surrogate mother (Juliette Lewis - 'Cape Fear', 'Kalifornia') and hold her for ransom. Little do they realize that she is carrying a child for Chidduck, a Mob money launderer (veteran character actor Scott Wilson - 'In Cold Blood', 'The Ninth Configuration') who has some nasty associates, and is reluctant to pay up.

The guys soon find themselves embroiled in a chinese puzzle of relationships including ruthless bodyguards Jeffers (Taye Digs - 'Go') and Obecks (Nicky Katt - 'SubUrbia', 'The Limey'), and Chidduck's bagman and troubleshooter, the complex Sarno (the legendary James Caan - 'The Godfather', 'Thief'), and Sarno's colleague Abner (frequent Clint Eastwood sidekick, and Juliet's real life father, Geoffrey Lewis).

To reveal what happens would be to ruin this wonderful movie. 'The Way Of The Gun' isn't a stupid popcorn action flick. It requires thought and attention to fully appreciate, and that fact, along with the lack of heroes, and the matter of fact violence, seems to have turned many people off. But in my opinion it is just those factors that will make this, like 'The Usual Suspects', a movie that will stand the test of time.Along with 'Chopper', the movie that has impressed the most so far this decade. Don't miss either one!

No Heroes

Author: rregan-3 from United States
15 September 2005

The title itself is based on the samurai code Way of the Sword. You live by the gun/sword, you die by the gun/sword. Phillipe and Del Toro's characters are reminiscent of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch, and The Man with No Name. The two say so much without ever talking. Their facial expressions and personal ticks speak louder than words ever could. In a world with seemingly no law, these two men get in way over their heads when they kidnapp the wrong surrogate mother. She just happens to be the surrogate mother to one of the richest men with the most mob contacts. Violence and mystery ensue as we see there are no heroes. The grand finale is a shoot-out that rivals that of The Wild Bunch.

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Ponderous, yet thrilling spectacle.

Author: Alice Liddel (-darragh@excite.com) from dublin, ireland
5 December 2000

This is one of the strangest films I have seen in a long time. Bloated and pretentious, it is like an oversized car that grinds to a halt, spurting occasionally into movement. Though humourless and cynical, it is an epic farce; epic because of the Western backdrop against which it is played; farce, because the whole project seems ready to collapse under its own earnestness, characters come and go unexpectedly, there's a lot of going in and out of doorways, the action shifts between distances thousands of miles apart, and yet the same characters seem to recongregate, as if some great big hand is moving the delf along a table.

I'm not able to tell whether 'Way of the Gun' is absurdly complex or foolishly simple. The major problem is the screenplay, which seems desperate to remind us of the plot's metaphysical depth, when, as Keaton and Melville have taught us, action is eloquent enough on its own. Some have seen the film as a denunciation of violent cinema, cool macho gangster nihilism, as the sterile, masturbatory crooks (the chief of whom can't even have a baby with his wife) is contrasted with the simple values of maternity and fertility - when the enviably calm 'bagman' Joe Sarno walks in on Robin in labour, he seems momentarily struck with awe. He is the only character at the end not tainted by blood - after all, he is the cleaner - and McQuarrie doesn't seem to be making much distinction between the blood of a bursting mother and the wounds of a bunch of gunmen.

If the screenplay never transcends its own gaze, we can always concentrate of McQuarrie's directorial style. Some have compared the film to 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' (the narrator gives himself and his accomplice the real-life surnames of the outlaws), but 'The Wild Bunch' is as good a starting point as any - the alternation of thunderous gunfights with an unearthly calm; the dead-end masculinity; the ritual finale (when Parker jumps into the dry fountain full of broken beer bottles - ouch!); the rare feel for landscape and architecture.

The long central sequence in Mexico, where the plot overload seems to stand still, is a familiar Peckinpah device, as the men rejuvenate, take stock, reflect, although actual Mexicans are conspicuously sparse. Peckinpah was very much influenced by 'The Treasure of Sierra Madre', and like most Huston films, 'Way' is a hymn to failure. What's surprising, though, for such a self-regarding wordsmith, is what a great action director McQuarrie is.

The gunfights here are truly visceral, very 1970s, exciting and full of crackling guns, the best since 'Heat', and showing most Hollywood action thrillers up for the cartoons they are. The opening fight outside the concert is like a diabolic inversion of 'Grease', while the 'Battleship Potemkin' parody getaway with the pregnant Robin is extraordinary. As is the way the cold modernist sheen a la 'Claire Dolan' gives onto the old-fashioned dustiness of a Western. The music is terrific too, alternating melodramatic squalls of 'Usual Suspects'-like dread, with thrilling castanetas, as if the whole film is just one big corrida.