Way of the Gun
Way of the Gun is probably my favorite underrated classics ever. Christopher McQuarrie creates a fantastic film that combines a Tarantino-esque cool crime caper with the grit and attitude of classic spaghetti westerns. McQuarrie effectively uses the yellow, brown, and gray color scheme against a dusty western backdrop to make modern day feel like 1880.
The title refers to the "way of the sword" which says, "you live by the sword, you die by the sword," a classic samurai philosophy that sets up the gung-ho lone gunmen mentality of the characters and continues the comparison of samurais and gunslingers started by the spaghetti western originators. The two main characters are played to perfection by Ryan Phillipe and Benicio Del Toro who did such a great job of "talking" to each other without words that their long lines of dialog written by McQuarrie were written out for their symbiotic relationship. This was partly in thanks to McQuarrie's trick of leaving the camera rolling after the scene finishes and allowing the actors to stay in character and continue the scene naturally leaving much of the scripted work on the cutting room floor.
Overall, McQuarrie sews a very cool crime yarn in a world where all of the characters are amoral and everyone has a secret, not all of which are revealed. A modern cult crime flick with heavy influences from classic westerns is always good in my book.
9/10
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