Sunday, November 23, 2014

The Way of the Gun (2000)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie                   Writer: Christopher McQuarrie
Film Score: Joe Kraemer                              Cinematography: Dick Pope
Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Ryan Phillippe, James Caan and Geoffrey Lewis

Maybe this seemed new and fresh back in 2000, I don’t know, but it sure seems dull and lifeless today. I came to this film because of Christopher McQuarrie’s reputation. Though I wasn’t a big fan of The Usual Suspects--and quite frankly think that his winning the Academy Award for that film is a bit suspect--I have been a big fan of his ever since, especially the films he has written for Tom Cruise, including Valkyrie, Jack Reacher and Edge of Tomorrow. The Way of the Gun, however, was made in the wake of his Oscar success and unwisely puts him in the director’s chair as well. It’s a recipe that doesn’t work, in my estimation, and fails on nearly every level possible. It’s not a bad movie, per se, it simply sets up expectations all across the board and lives up to none of them. It tries for a Tarantino or Leonard type humor but only achieves it occasionally and even then in a lesser way. It seems to also try for a Peckinpah or Tarantino style of violence, but then seems to completely shy away from it. And while attempting a Leone type of visual style, the digital images and artificial set designs make it look more like a TV movie. It’s a combination crime-western-noir film that doesn’t do any of the genres justice.

The film begins outside of a nightclub. Benicio Del Toro is sitting on the car of Henry Griffin who is tricked out with the kind of super-perm worn by Dee Snider of Twisted Sister. The alarm goes off and Griffin’s girlfriend, the great Sarah Silverman, simply goes off, cursing every name in the book at Del Toro and companion Ryan Phillippe. When Phillippe confronts them in the street Silverman is still delivering a continuous stream of insults and images of how Griffin is going to beat him up. In what is probably the best moment of the film, Phillippe begins the fight not by hitting Griffin but by punching Silverman right in the face with all his might. Del Toro and Phillippe are small-time hoods, faced with the choice of crime or minimum wage. In a sperm donor clinic--the one other humorous scene in the film--they overhear a phone conversation about a surrogate mother, Juliette Lewis, who is having a baby for a rich couple and decide to kidnap her for the ransom. What they don’t realize is that the husband is a mob front man who has bodyguards on the surrogate and an expert cleanup man in James Caan. It’s a convoluted story that includes Geoffrey Lewis as one of Caan’s operatives, and red-haired Dylan Kussman--who never really broke free from his role in Dead Poet’s Society--as an obstetrician.

Christopher McQuarrie claims that he wanted to do something unique in film, that the imposed morality from as far back as the production code days was still ubiquitous in Hollywood and that he wanted to change that to a more realistic look at crime. The problem is there’s a reason for the Hollywood style and that is because fantasy is more interesting than reality. While most of the characters lack any kind of moral center, it doesn’t lend any more interest to the film. In fact, Phillippe, who narrates some of the film, says that he and Del Toro have made an effort to fly under the legal radar, and then wind up shooting two of the bodyguards as well as an innocent woman as they are kidnapping Juliette Lewis. It doesn’t make sense, and it weakens the association for the audience with the protagonists. James Caan is about the only interesting character in the film, and his direction is ponderously slow. He lacks the vitality that we know he has in abundance, and instead of using that to his advantage McQuarrie quashes it under a misguided attempt at gravitas. Geoffrey Lewis is wasted in a small role, while Juliette Lewis and Kussman never achieve anything like verisimilitude. The Way of the Gun has its moments--and inventive five-mile-per-hour car chase among them--but they are too far and few between, and the rest of the film unfolds like a long stretch of Midwestern interstate. Not recommended.