The Old Way is an overly-talky Western stocked with stereotypes and clichés instead of characters. Nicolas Cage plays a retired killer settled down with a family. When bandits murder his wife, he has to come out of retirement, towing his steely-eyed daughter along for the ride.

It’s rare to say, but this Western needed more gunfights. It’s only a little over 90 minutes and we spend almost every one of them listening to detached characters speak like robots. I just wanted them to literally cut to the chase… or to the gunfight… or to anything more than having to listen to Cage walk his way through this flick.

Yeah, Cage is a problem. His whole performance is like him seeing an old Clint Eastwood film and saying, “Yeah, I can do that.” He doesn’t play a character, he plays an impersonation. A stereotype. And the little girl has to play just as cold-eyed and emotionless… like maybe she saw True Grit and said, “Yeah, I can do that.”

The bad guys are out of stock Western clichés too… though the villain is a little more ray-of-sunshine than usual. Not a very good acting job, but at least it was a little different.

This was all build-up to a pointless waste of time showdown. The whole movie was a pointless waste of time. A talky, overly caricatured waste of time. They don’t make many Westerns and this one ain’t gonna move the needle.

Score: 61