“Surely,” you think to yourself, “Nicolas Cage has done a western before.” After all, the man’s very physiognomy marks him as an heir to all the magnificent freaks who populated Sergio Leone’s OTT flicks, if not John Ford’s more sober affairs. But nope, he has not—and believe me, we checked. And so, it gives us great pleasure to bring to you the trailer for The Old Way, the first Nicolas Cage horse opera.
Directed by Brett Donowho, who called the shots on a string of micro budget horror films before pivoting to one of those oh-Christ-Bruce-Willis-needs-money VOD actioners (2018’s Acts of Violence) The Old Way sees cage as Colton Briggs, former cold-blooded shootist, now a family man until the son of a dude he blew away back in the day shows up looking for revenge. Colton is forced to draw on his violent past not just to see off his antagonists, but to protect his young daughter Brooke (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). Check out the trailer.
So, it’s a little Unforgiven, if you squint, with a touch of Logan-style tough guy/cute kid antics (you’ll be wanting John Wayne in either The Cowboys, True Grit, or 3 Godfathers for the genre-appropriate antecedent) and even a touch of Tombstone and a few other classics of the form in the mix, even if only in dialogue references.
It all looks a little cheap, if we’re being honest, and we thought we’d gotten through Cage’s “paying off the tax bill” wilderness years, with recent efforts like the superb Pig and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent indicating the man formerly known as Nicolas Coppola was done with pay cheque gigs, but hey: Nic Cage in a western has to be worth a look, right? There’s no word of a local release date as yet, but we’ll let you know when we know.
