The success of Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction spawned a whole wave of gritty copycat thrillers that revolved around unsavoury characters doing bad things to each other. The Way of The Gun is one such film, featuring two reprehensible criminal drifters— Mr. Parker (Ryan Phillippe) and Mr. Longbaugh (Benicio Del Toro)—who kidnap and hold to ransom Robin (Juliette Lewis), the heavily pregnant surrogate mother of a Mafia money launderer, who shows his displeasure by sending out his toughest men to bring her back.
Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who also wrote the over-rated The Usual Suspects, the film struggles to match the hip sense of style or sharpness of dialogue of either of Tarantino's aforementioned films, despite the best efforts of a cool cast that includes Taye Diggs, James Caan, and Juliette's old man, Geoffrey Lewis. McQuarrie does at least manage to end his film with a suitably ballistic scene that lives up to the title: a well executed and very bloody Peckinpah style gun battle that leaves a pile of corpses in its wake.
Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who also wrote the over-rated The Usual Suspects, the film struggles to match the hip sense of style or sharpness of dialogue of either of Tarantino's aforementioned films, despite the best efforts of a cool cast that includes Taye Diggs, James Caan, and Juliette's old man, Geoffrey Lewis. McQuarrie does at least manage to end his film with a suitably ballistic scene that lives up to the title: a well executed and very bloody Peckinpah style gun battle that leaves a pile of corpses in its wake.