Reports of the artistic rebirth of Nicolas Cage – a Cage-aissance or whatever you want to call the recent blip, during which he made a few better-than-usual films (Pig, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent) – seem to be over. Now it’s time for Cage, one of the industry’s hardest-working, least fussy, but still notably talented thespians to get back to the business of making schlocky pictures to pay off back taxes or buy more dinosaur skeletons.
So here he is playing Colton Briggs, a character name with the kind of cretic stress pattern that somehow suggests a warrior of yore. This being somewhere near the Montana territory in the 19th century, back in the day Briggs was a dead-eyed bounty hunter, his visage softened only by the fabulous minky voluptuousness of his handlebar moustache. Briggs briskly guns down a man trying to kill him right in front of the would-be attacker’s young son. Fast forward 20 years and Briggs has shaved off the ’tache and gone straight, with a pretty, doomed wife (Kerry Knuppe), an unnervingly dead-eyed little girl (Ryan Kiera Armstrong, strikingly good), and a store selling bags of flour and whatnot to locals.
But the past catches up with him in the form of James McCallister (Noah Le Gros), the now-grown son of the man Briggs kills in the pre-title prologue, who with his posse wreaks revenge on Briggs homestead. This compels the old gunslinger to return to, as the title suggests, the old way. Given the lack of social services or even babysitters in the wild west, Briggs decides to take his daughter with him on his revenge mission, laying the groundwork for a lot of True Grit-style grizzled-guy-smart-kid bonding that’s hackily written but reasonably watchable thanks to Cage and Armstrong’s screen chemistry. The two connect over their shared lack of inclination to cry at moments of tragedy, suggesting that a stunted emotional range might be a good thing when it brings families together like this.
• The Old Way is released on 13 January in cinemas.
