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Showing all 20 reviews...
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DVD: "The Way of The Gun (Special Edition)"
I can honestly say, this is the only movie that I have enough respect for to call a masterpiece.
10/10
28.1.2007 -
mattmo833@ - age: 18-25
Killer movie with great gun play. Benicio Del Toro was incredible and Ryan Philippe managed to jump into manhood in a manner of seconds. Don't go see it for the plot, go see it for the ACTION. John Woo would be proud!!! Long
8/10
16.1.2001 -
longpingz@ - age: 18-25
One of the better releases for mid sept. Yes it is violent, but then again violence is everywhere these days... COOL SMART script COOL SMART acting ORIGINAL, a great mix of elements and emotions... DONT WATCH if you have a weak heart... some scenes a little more violent than usual... BUT REMEMBER, ITS A MOVIE!!!
8/10
28.9.2000 -
santi781@ - age: 18-25
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Well, what can you add after the long comment above "cesca2000@my-deja.com" made? He got in nearly everything (nice work man! ). All I can say is that despite apparences and first sight, The Way of the gun is very POETIC, especially in the end. It's true, some of the scenes are gory, maybe sometimes we would not need to see all that blood, but that's just part of the process that makes the ending so meaningful. One critic perhaps: it's kind of slow to get going, I mean we have a hard time to understand what's going on there, even though it's also part of a process: filling the remaining pieces of the puzzle bit by bit. It might however be beyond some people's patience to wait for that time... If you liked Fight Club, even though it's a completely different story and the message is different (there are significant similarities (e. G. Big violence vs. Ending)), you should like The Way of the Gun... Ah last thing: the beginning is VERY, VERY funny!
8/10
22.9.2000 -
mpanty@ - age: 18-25
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Amazing... The gun scene was spectacular. I haven't seen such a clever, original and superior movie like that since The Usual Suspects. A definite must see.
9/10
22.9.2000 -
x13ty@ - age: 18-25
Braindead! FFFFFFF, KILLLLLL, FFF, KILLL. OK to rent.
5/10
22.9.2000 -
nknett@ - age: 26-35
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[ATTENTION: This review reveals content of the movie.]
For years now I've watch Christopher McQuarrie talk about film theory and execution. About the process of writing and the translation of that writing into cinema. Every year McQuarrie has been coming to the Austin Film Festival and Writer's Conference to take part in panels about the process of screenwriting and it's subsequent adaptation to film. And each year I saw him getting more and more frustrated that everytime he stood up to talk... everytime he grabbed a microphone... all he could use as an example was THE USUAL SUSPECTS. One film, one oscar. I saw him fight tooth and nail for nearly two years to get a brilliant script by an unknown writer about ALEXANDER THE GREAT made with him as director. Everyone agreed the script was wonderful, but... McQuarrie was just a writer... right? Not only that, he's the guy that wrote that... USUAL SUSPECTS film so all he can do is CRIME films right? Well, McQuarrie decided to write one last crime film. He wrote the script in 5 days to star Benicio Del Toro. He wrote it low budget and mean and gritty. People want violence. People want strong language. People want senseless visceral bleakness and gore? Well... In the first 3 minutes of THE WAY OF THE GUN, McQuarrie hands us the most biting satire of truly outrageous obscene violence and language you've seen in a film. A pure explosion of obscenities screamed out for seemingly no reason. An explosion of hardcore sensless violence... And it is as if McQuarrie was saying in a... YOU WANT TO SMOKE? HERE, SMOKE THIS AND THIS AND THIS... until you are nearly gagging from it's nonsensical stuff it down your throat audacity. And after that therapeutic session is over... After you are left swirling around wondering, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT, McQuarrie weaves one of the absolute best crime films around. This is like a modern day film noir WILD BUNCH. This movie has the best composition of shootouts since the hey day of Sam Peckinpah. This isn't John Woo. This isn't about slow motion ballets with feathers and birds and two fisted firing. This isn't about sliding down bannisters in a pair of badass sunglasses looking like the swingest badass dick in town. This is Peckinpah. This is about desperate smart types that think they have it all figured out. Not only is it Peckinpah... but it has a bit of 3 DAYS OF THE CONDOR in for good measure. No... it isn't about lifted scenes or imitations... It's about a filmmaker that really truly is fed up with a genre which he KNOWS he's good at and showing people... LOOK... I can do this in my sleep... now let me do something that I can really sink my teeth into. Now, a mere 24 hours prior to seeing THE WAY OF THE GUN, I was on the North side of Austin watching TRAFFIC, and I came out of that film singing the praises of Benicio Del Toro... well... the calendar day on my watch has turned one day and I'm on the South side of town... Only this time, I'm watching Benicio Del Toro in English playing a character by the name of Longbaugh (which for those of you that don't catch it... that's the Sundance Kid's real last name), who is teamed up with Ryan Phillipe's PARKER (I'm willing to bet this is McQuarrie's nod to Donald Westlake's infamous character of the same name)((ADDED: I spoke with McQuarrie on the phone yesterday... and he made me feel like the idiot I am by saying, "Parker is Butch Cassidy's real name! " Now... How I didn't grok that... I don't know. I feel like Phillip Seymour Hoffman after he kisses Dirk Diggler and he is scorned. )). Now I have an unreasonable hatred for Ryan Phillipe. The moment I heard that he had gotten Reese Witherspoon pregnant and then married her... I swore a solemn oath to despise and hate Ryan Phillipe for the rest of his unnaturally lucky life. Now I doubly hate him, because on top of living the luckiest life on earth with Reese Witherspoon... He is fantastic in WAY OF THE GUN. First off, he doesn't sound at all like Ryan Phillipe... instead he sounds exactly like Christopher McQuarrie. Now, I figure most of you have no idea what McQuarrie sounds like... his pentameter for delivering dialogue... but Ryan Phillipe nailed it. As a result, his dialogue is just the easiest most wonderful listen in the world... it feels completely natural and is great character work. With the characters of Longbaugh and Parker you have two... bam bam characters. These guys know only the most rudimentary basic rules of pulling scams. They have been small time hoods, pulling small time jobs... escalating the stakes and not caring if they die. They charge headfirst into things and think twice only upon facing death. They are wonderful characters. Now... if this were an ordinary low budget run of the mill crime flick... I'd be finished now. I've talked about the two guys pulling the masks over their faces... we know there is some bunch of cheese they are trying to make off with... Well... for your mediocre crime film... that's all you need. But wait... there's more... Taye Diggs and Nicky Katt play a pair of bodyguards. They are employed by some party trying to protect that which the party considers their property. They have no second doubts... they are professionals... they have no ethics... they do what they are paid to do, unless they decide they can get paid better to do what they are told and get away with stuff that nobody needs to know about. They are young and hungry. Charismatic and smart. They have never lost, they do not plan on ever learning the meaning of the word. Then there is James Caan. Now there are few people on the planet as intrinsically cool as James Caan. This man brings with him all the glorious baggage of his past. We've seen him die and we've seen him win. He is an icon of the seventies... He is a badass of yesteryear, and in THE WAY OF THE GUN, they play that angle. He is someone that has gotten old in a business that you are not suppose to age past 27 years old. He is not rich though he handles millions of dollars. He's seen situations like the one that is currently in front of the characters of this film... he's seen this situation come and go. And he knows... for certain... he will be alive at the end of the story. He knows how this game is played. And he doesn't want to play. He talks to all the players... reasons with them... tells them how they'll die, how this is going to go wrong, tells them how they can win a little if they give up the big cheese. He doesn't want to see anymore death... but that's his job. You ever seen 3 DAYS OF THE CONDOR? Remember the Max Von Sydow character? In a seemingly more human and understanding and emotional way... James Caan is that type of character. Juliette Lewis... She plays the part of the Maltese Falcon, she's the suitcase with the glowing insides, she's the plastic gumball ring in a Parker novel... The only difference is... you and I don't understand fully the purpose in dying for and about a mysterious black bird or a cheap briefcase with a satanic combination. And we certainly don't understand dying for a plastic gumball ring. And usually in these stories... we kind of hope that the great whatever it is... doesn't go to anyone... that it is simply destroyed to prove the futility of all this senseless violence. Except here... the inanimate object is alive... and even doubly so... She's 9 months pregnant... she can barely walk... Labor pains are racking her body... and to everyone concerned in the story... she's just the black enamel paint that you're supposed to scrape off the gold. She's the bag containing the M&Ms. Have you ever felt compassion for the bag? You will here. Geoffrey Lewis... you will recognize him from about a bazillion different Clint Eastwood movies... You might remember him as being the groundskeeper in LAWNMOWER MAN or perhaps from SALEM'S LOT... He's one of those character actors that delights you upon instant recognition. In this... he's sort of playing the Edmond O'Brien character in THE WILD BUNCH... he's a tired old worthless coot on his last leg. He wants to just get this life over with... he's seen and done too much... he's tired of it all. He's like a ticking time bomb that everyone knows the batteries are running low in. There are more characters... the big boss, the son the beautiful vain wife... there's the doctor with a shrouded past, there are mexican whores and locales that just watch the violence go down with out an interest one. The film is filled with interesting little characters with their own sub-motivations and back stories... This isn't about obvious characters... This was smart throughout. Now... had this JUST been great characters in a great plot with great action... well it would've been a pretty great movie, but the score... DEAR GOD THE SCORE... Joe Kraemer did it. WHO THE HELL IS JOE KRAEMER? Man alive does this score rule. If you saw the trailer that AICN exclusively showed you, you heard the most minor tantilizing tidbit of this score... you heard the knuckle cracking flamenco dance style rhythms pulsing. The score rules. It is used to powerful iconic levels in this film. Allowing the gunfire itself to play into rhythms... A classic action score. This is not an award winning screenplay or movie... this will be in my dvd player till the laser has burned through the disc. For hardcore smart action crime character film fans, this movie will leave you floored. I went with 15 A. I. C. N. Geeks... some expected to hate it... some expected it to be ok... NOONE EXPECTED WHAT WE GOT. Am I overhyping it? No... because I know about a ton of stuff I haven't even begun to tell you... you have no idea about the action scenes, the repeating dramatic motifs and dialogues... you know nothing about the brilliant plot device that manages to keep the film going and the entire time you are going... .
9/10
17.9.2000 -
cesca2000@ - age: 26-35
The Way Of The Gun was simply amazing! The dialogues are quick and intellegent, the violence is NOT the usual Hollywood cr@p and the cast could not be better for this type of movie. Excellent!
9/10
15.9.2000 -
dave_beaudet@ - age: 18-25
Amazing. The best gun action I'ive sen in a long time. The planning and thought the two had was just impressive.
9/10
15.9.2000 -
abenchimol@ - age: 18-25
Excellent and original.
10/10
13.9.2000 -
m_peretz@ - age: 26-35
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Excellent movie! Ryan Phillipe was amazing. The dialogue flowed really well, and the opening scene reeled you in right away. It had also possibly one of the greatest shoot-out scenes I have seen in a while. A definite movie for intellects.
9/10
12.9.2000 -
valentino,a@ - age: 18-25
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Excellent flick! Anybody who got a kick out of 'The Ususal Suspects' & 'Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead' should beg and/or steal to get in :).
10/10
12.9.2000 -
tiganu@ - age: 26-35
[ATTENTION: This review reveals content of the movie.]
Yeah, this movie rocks... the blond guy wins.
10/10
12.9.2000 -
asd@ - age: 36-49
A standard shoot-em-up type of film that seems to have become Juliette Lewis' stock in trade. It does give the audience some respect and expects us to connect the dots of the plot to a certain degree, which raises my evaluation of it a degree.
7/10
11.9.2000 -
b,koch@ - age: 26-35
A great flick. Something like Usual Suspects meets Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. The acting is very good, though Philippe's performance seemed a little forced. The plot twists throughout the movie, while not dumbfounding, make for a nice quick pace. What I enjoyed most about this movie was its cleverness. With competent protagonists and antagonists, the movie seemed more like a violent game of chess than a "run through and blow up the bad guy" movie, with plenty of deceit and subterfuge, along with some decent action. My main complaint is that we're thrown into the movie without any real explanation of the main characters' motivation, so it's kind of hard to get involved with the characters. Ratings: Blow stuff up factor: 5 Acting: 8. 5 Plot: 8 Direction: 9 Character development: 6 Overall recommendation: Worth 11$
9/10
11.9.2000 -
sliph@ - age: 18-25
Extremely violent, a bit confusing, but highly entertaining. A must see for Ryan Phillipe fans.
7/10
10.9.2000 -
vinman043@ - age: 36-49
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