The Way of the Gun (2000) Ryan Phillippe, Benicio Del Toro, James Caan, Juliette Lewis, Taye Diggs, Nicky Katt, Dylan Kussman, Scott Wilson, Kristin Lehman, Geoffrey Lewis. Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. 118 minutes. Rated R, 2 stars (out of five stars)
Review by Ed Johnson-Ott, NUVO Newsweekly www.nuvo.com Archive reviews at http://us.imdb.com/ReviewsBy?Edward+Johnson-Ott To receive reviews by e-mail at no charge, send subscription requests to ejohnsonott@prodigy.net or e-mail ejohnsonott-subscribe@onelist.com with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
When Academy Award winning writer ("The Usual Suspects") and first-time director Christopher McQuarrie sat down to block out "a kidnapping saga as a contemporary western awash in film noir overtones," he had an agenda. It seems McQuarrie was unhappy with the way mainstream Hollywood screenplays handle characters when they behave badly.
"The thing that has continually bothered me about films today is this skewed sense of justice, this false sense of accountability," stated McQuarrie. "In reality, people die all the time and the score isn't evened, their death isn't justified. What's frustrating with Hollywood's approach is that you see someone do a bad deed and they're punished for it 10 times over. Not only is that not reality, but you're telling people that their judgment about anything is okay."
Thanks a heap, Chris. After watching and reading countless news stories about human beings doing unspeakably horrible things to other human beings and getting away with their deeds, what a comfort it is to know that you are out there, striving to insure that movies are just as repulsive as real life.
"The Way of the Gun" follows two creeps as they kidnap a surrogate mother-to-be, only to learn that the target of their ransom demands is a money-laundering, union-busting bagman with a slew of thugs in his employ. The story takes place in some alternate universe, where innocent bystanders stare numbly at gunfights until they are instructed to flee, where men race about shooting at each other with little visible concern over the flying bullets and where no one ever calls the police.
Oh yes, Christopher McQuarrie has this hard-edged reality business down pat.
In his alternate universe, women merely seethe or shriek, while the men-folk pontificate endlessly, lobbing around quotes like:
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