Ex-bounty hunter, Colton Briggs (Nicolas Cage), follows a well-trodden trail. The odds are classic, one against four just like Will Kane in "High Noon", even more like Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" who had young Mattie Ross on the ride for revenge against Ned Pepper and his crew.
Accompanying Colton is his young daughter, Brooke Briggs (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), but this journey doesn't follow the old way all the way because there is a detour up some twisty psychological canyons.
There is family business here. Time has marched on, Colton, who had been a mean, squint-eyed, taciturn man with a serious piece of iron strapped to his thigh, has tucked the Peacemaker away in the attic and is now a respectable store keeper, albeit a little uptight. He leads a gentler life with wife Ruth and Brooke on a small farm just outside town.
However he has forgotten about Walter McAllister whom he left lying in a street taking his last breath while his son, James, stood watching. 20 years later James, played with evil charm by Noah Le Gros, has grown up and comes a-hunting.
My love of westerns goes back more to the likes of John Ford and Howard Hawks, but this film has more modern antecedents, Spaghetti Westerns and even Tarantino.
A few things bugged me. Director Brian Donowho seems to have based his take on Old West shootouts on those gunfight reenactments for tourists where cowboys fall over balconies and the range of a Colt revolver is about the same as a modern XMZ Rifle. Then too much happens off camera, especially at the end. It's too subtle; we miss the staredowns.
And I don't like child actors encouraged to use bad language on screen. Old fashioned? You bet.
The most engaging part of the film is the interaction between Colton and Brooke. Alongside the revenge story is Colton's fear that he has passed on his lack of empathy for everyone except his wife to his daughter. We sense the distance between father and daughter; at the end we wait to see whether the gap has closed.
Andrew Morgan Smith's pacy score with fiddle, banjo and full orchestra, takes us back to the time more than other elements.
"The Old Way" goes some of the way of the classic Western, but overlaid with a modern vibe that occasionally jars the ear. When Ruth warns James McAllister, "You boys are in a world of hurt", it sounds more 1980s than 1880s. Possibly modern filmmakers don't care that much, but they may find it useful to run an old Ford movie, at least they were 70 or so years closer to the era.
Accompanying Colton is his young daughter, Brooke Briggs (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), but this journey doesn't follow the old way all the way because there is a detour up some twisty psychological canyons.
There is family business here. Time has marched on, Colton, who had been a mean, squint-eyed, taciturn man with a serious piece of iron strapped to his thigh, has tucked the Peacemaker away in the attic and is now a respectable store keeper, albeit a little uptight. He leads a gentler life with wife Ruth and Brooke on a small farm just outside town.
However he has forgotten about Walter McAllister whom he left lying in a street taking his last breath while his son, James, stood watching. 20 years later James, played with evil charm by Noah Le Gros, has grown up and comes a-hunting.
My love of westerns goes back more to the likes of John Ford and Howard Hawks, but this film has more modern antecedents, Spaghetti Westerns and even Tarantino.
A few things bugged me. Director Brian Donowho seems to have based his take on Old West shootouts on those gunfight reenactments for tourists where cowboys fall over balconies and the range of a Colt revolver is about the same as a modern XMZ Rifle. Then too much happens off camera, especially at the end. It's too subtle; we miss the staredowns.
And I don't like child actors encouraged to use bad language on screen. Old fashioned? You bet.
The most engaging part of the film is the interaction between Colton and Brooke. Alongside the revenge story is Colton's fear that he has passed on his lack of empathy for everyone except his wife to his daughter. We sense the distance between father and daughter; at the end we wait to see whether the gap has closed.
Andrew Morgan Smith's pacy score with fiddle, banjo and full orchestra, takes us back to the time more than other elements.
"The Old Way" goes some of the way of the classic Western, but overlaid with a modern vibe that occasionally jars the ear. When Ruth warns James McAllister, "You boys are in a world of hurt", it sounds more 1980s than 1880s. Possibly modern filmmakers don't care that much, but they may find it useful to run an old Ford movie, at least they were 70 or so years closer to the era.