The Old Way (2023)

Directed by Brett Donowho. Starring Nicolas Cage, Tyran Kiera Armstrong, Noah Le Gros, Nick Searcy, Shiloh Fernandez, Clint Howard, Abraham Benrubi, Dean Armstrong, Kerry Knuppe. [R]

A humdrum title for a humdrum Western, burdened by a thin variant on a timeworn setup. Cage is a reformed killer of some notoriety, now a law-abiding general store operator with a wife and child, but he returns to his gunslinging ways after bandits on a vendetta leave him a widow. Cage lacks conviction and energy, turning his character into more of a taciturn cipher than was surely intended by the filmmakers. Unattractively photographed and anemically paced, the movie blows by like a lazy tumbleweed and is forgotten before the gunsmoke clears. As the protagonist’s deadpan yet precocious daughter, Armstrong plays it halfway between Mattie Ross and Wednesday Addams, but she still manages to be a more interesting object/figure onscreen than anything else this genre throwaway can provide. Filmed in 2021.

39/100