Movies: The Way of the Gun

Continuing the theme of impulse buys for today, a long time ago in a faraway Best Buy checkout line I picked up "The Way of the Gun," a film directed by Christopher McQuarrie. The DVD was in the bargain bin with a bunch of other movies, some decent and some not-so-decent. I had heard of the flick before, so I decided to take the plunge and plunk down a fiver.

"The Way of the Gun" stars Ryan Phillippe and Benicio del Toro as drifters who hatch a plot to kidnap the surrogate mother of a wealthy gangster. Things go south when the gangster's bodyguards, as well as his righthand man, become embroiled in the plot, with $15 million in cash up for grabs. While the movie has some decent ideas, it just doesn't ever come together like in McQuarrie's previous script, "The Usual Suspects."

It's said that McQuarrie's brother was a former Navy SEAL who helped choreograph the action sequences, and it's not hard to believe. The shootout embedded above has only minor flashes of this influence (the one-handed reloads and injured shooter drills). I'm pretty sure the whole M1911 fusillade sequence was put in by someone else (someone who drastically overestimates how many .45 mags one can carry on the body). A scene earlier in the film, though, accurately portrays the delayed report from a rifle shot, not to mention the recoil that jumps a rifle scope up.

Rating: 6/10