The Old Ways 2023 by AverageMansReviews

The Old Ways 2023 by AverageMansReviews

Review Time

Warning: there is flashing effects/colourful effects/shooting/cutting/capital punishment/man on woman violence/animal cruelty/burning/torture/medical

Colton Briggs' history is coming for revenge: Colton Briggs [Nicholas Cage:] is a shop owner; he was the best of the best as it goes for outlaws, he seems to have a mental disability and is unable to show affection, he is married to Ruth Briggs [Kerry Knuppe:] she is aware of her husband's past history and the one that is responsible for turning his life around. They also have a daughter Brooke Briggs [Ryan Kiera Armstrong:] that has clearly inherited her father's disability as they act and speak the same way and in one sequence she cleans every jellybean sweet which is not a sign of a disability, but what is; is she chooses to clean every jellybean sweet and then divide them into different jars by their colour, she has no idea of her father's history until this day. This day when this group of escaped convicts led by James McCallister [Younger: Everett Blunck/Older: Noah Le Gros:] has spent many years waiting to seek revenge on Colton Briggs for something he did to him many years ago.

The frame work and pacing of this 96 minute film is; it clearly knows how is structured and how it wants to proceed; in short solid foundation and likewise solid pacing, it gets a little bit quicker in the final section and throughout here.

Art: we consistently see scenes of the scenery, landscapes and all those kinds of things which is good.

Now for the rest of this film such as the comedy, action, character developments and performances: as I have already indicated the daughter is very much like a father as it relates to disability. So he instructs her to cry to bait this lawman in so that they can stick up [as in Colton points his head so they can steal his horse.] But she has no idea how to do this, so her version feels as you would expect it to feel very false but it works, there are other comedy bits and pieces before this and after this example and generally speaking the action sequences are all good they revolve around revolver battles as this film is based in the time of the era of Westerns.

The character developments and the performances are once again generally speaking all good, but however this does have one massive problem and it would be this; as I have been indicating/referencing throughout this review is father and daughter have a disability of some description where they aren't very good at showing emotions including the dialogue exchange which I am about to make reference to; this father says and I am paraphrasing here but I know I am in the right ballpark at minimum learn how to fake emotions. So on one hand this is excellent, but different character developments. But on the other hand in the closing section of this film they really let down his character developments, without giving too much away this would be completely out of character for these two.

This film receives: 5/10, this film is mixed; it is good, but it has three noticeable problems with it; the first you already know, the second is it doesn't have much of an ending and finally in the ending based on what happens much earlier on in the film she can't go home, but this Marshal; Marshal Jarrett [Nick Searcy:] is very much aware of her father's criminal history, wants her to go home and basically look after her father's shopAnd just for the record I am aware that this Marshal doesn't know what we know, so with taking all of this into consideration I settled on this mark