The Old Way review – ​Nicolas Cage lifts generic western retread

A grizzled frontier shopkeeper must draw on his outlaw gunslinger past to avenge the murder of his wife, in this generic western retread. The key to the approach is in the title – there’s a timeworn predictability in everything from the plot (variations of this story have been told many times before, most recently in the superior Old Henry) to the big, expansive, Alfred Newman-inspired score, to the widescreen wild west backdrop.

Two elements make the picture worth watching: one is Nicolas Cage, wearily brutal as Colton Briggs, a man who has already completed a lifetime’s worth of killing. The other is Ryan Kiera Armstrong, playing his 12-year-old daughter Brooke, a chip off the old block. Both Colton and Brooke struggle to manifest the “normal’ emotional responses. Their revenge is coolly efficient; their relationship – the only unconventional element in the picture – is angular, uncomfortable and unexpectedly affecting.

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