The Old Way ★★

Brett Donowho

Starring Nicholas Cage, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Noah Le Gros, Clint Howard, Shiloh Fernandez

Nicolas Cage does what he wants. He also does it when he wants. It’s great to see him so prolific on our screens at the moment even if the quality is a little hit and miss. After the highs of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and his cooky take on Dracula, we turn now to the western and things have gone slightly awry.

Cage plays Colton Briggs, a retired gunslinger who faces his past when tragedy hits his family and he goes on the hunt for revenge. It’s a story we’ve seen countless times now, and unfortunately this offers nothing original. The film has a Hallmark melodrama quality to it which makes proceedings too formulaic and bland.

Towards the end of the film, my sense of reality began to skew as I started to think that this was actually a movie about Nicolas Cage playing a hammy gunslinger in a cheesy western that should have been shown in the background somewhere during Massive Talent. It really is an odd film that will be unfortunately forgotten in a heartbeat.

Nic Cage will always do what he wants, and we love that from him. We are just doomed to accept that for every Pig there will be an Old Way.

The Old Way available now on NowTV and Sky Cinema