Mark Reviews Movies: THE OLD WAY

The Old Way, Saban Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 5, 2023

What kind of person was an outlaw of the Old West? That's the question of Carl W. Lucas' screenplay for The Old Way, which follows a seemingly reformed gunslinger back to his former habits in a search for vengeance. The story is awfully familiar, of course, but Lucas begins to take it in a slightly unique direction via his anti-hero.

This is neither a bad man with just motives nor a good man pulled toward villainy. Good and bad mean nothing to Colton Briggs (Nicolas Cage), because he's essentially a sociopath.

The idea is intriguing, but Lucas and director Brett Donowho don't trust it to the extent that they probably should. There's a dark and potentially unsettling character study within this material, as well as an examination of how such darkness spreads, but instead of digging into those themes, this movie falls back on a series of clichés and the relative safety of its formulaic plot.

A prologue shows us Colton in the prime of his days as a ne'er-do-well, serving as a hired gun for the ruthless head of a town in Wyoming. With his boss about to hang a man, Colton stops an ambush led by the doomed man's brother, only to leave the man who hired him to die of a gunshot wound in the street while he collects what's owed to him from his pocket and the boss' shop. He also shoots and kills the condemned man, just freed from the noose, when the guy tries to avenge his brother, leaving the dead man's young son to watch Colton ride away on horseback.

Twenty years later, Colton is a family man, running that same shop and living in a cabin just outside the town with his wife (played by Kerry Knuppe) and their daughter Brooke (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). Colton walks his daughter into town one day, letting her stay at the shop after the girl's classes are canceled. The two don't get along, by the way, mostly because they're so alike. Both are impatient, particular with details, and uncomfortable in any kind of normal social situation.

In more modern parlance, we might view Colton and Brooke as existing somewhere on the autism spectrum, and let's just say it's a good thing such terminology doesn't exist within the era of the movie's setting. If Lucas made some direct connection between that condition and these characters' specific problems, it would be even more uncomfortable than the indirect insinuation that we do get here.

Instead, let's just say that Colton and Brooke have difficulty understanding and experiencing emotions, since that's the real key to their eventual hunt of revenge. The two return home to find U.S. Marshal Jarret (Nick Searcy) and his deputies at the cabin. A gang led by James McCallister (Noah Le Gros)—whose relevant identity is treated as a mystery, even though it's pretty obvious from the start—arrived at the homestead while the two were away and viciously murdered Colton's wife, the girl's mother.

The rest of this, obviously, probably needn't be explained. Colton and Brooke go hunting for James and his gang, who are waiting for the former outlaw anyway. Most of this routine and often unconvincing, from the cleanliness of the costumes and sets, to the haphazard staging of the few shootouts within the story, to how easily Colton goes about finding his targets on account of plenty of convenient incompetence.

Lucas and Donowho rush through this plot, which is a shame. The nature of Colton's character as a man who has no sense of morality or emotions—while it's also possible Brooke either inherited that trait or, like the villain here, has learned it from him—is a potentially fascinating subversion of the romanticized Western hero/anti-hero. The notion that Colton was never and still isn't in this business of killing for money or fame or even vengeance turns him into a disturbing enigma (At one point, he considers killing Brooke, simply because the marshal says Colton shouldn't do anything brash while the girl is alive). Eventually, though, that angle disappears, because the wife turns out to be an exception to Colton's lack of emotions (Cage just seems to play him as a bored guy), while Brooke could become a second exception as the two bond on the trail.

Then again, all of this might be giving The Old Way more credit than it deserves. After all, the movie's examinations of this character and the central relationship mean a lot less to it than going through the motions of a predictable plot.

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