This is one of the strangest films I have seen in a long time. Bloated and pretentious, it is like an oversized car that grinds to a halt, spurting occasionally into movement. Though humourless and cynical, it is an epic farce; epic because of the Western backdrop against which it is played; farce, because the whole project seems ready to collapse under its own earnestness, characters come and go unexpectedly, there's a lot of going in and out of doorways, the action shifts between distances thousands of miles apart, and yet the same characters seem to recongregate, as if some great big hand is moving the delf along a table.
I'm not able to tell whether 'Way of the Gun' is absurdly complex or foolishly simple. The major problem is the screenplay, which seems desperate to remind us of the plot's metaphysical depth, when, as Keaton and Melville have taught us, action is eloquent enough on its own.
Some have seen the film as a denunciation of violent cinema, cool macho gangster nihilism, as the sterile, masturbatory crooks (the chief of whom can't even have a baby with his wife) is contrasted with the simple values of maternity and fertility - when the enviably calm 'bagman' Joe Sarno walks in on Robin in labour, he seems momentarily struck with awe. He is the only character at the end not tainted by blood - after all, he is the cleaner - and McQuarrie doesn't seem to be making much distinction between the blood of a bursting mother and the wounds of a bunch of gunmen.
If the screenplay never transcends its own gaze, we can always concentrate of McQuarrie's directorial style. Some have compared the film to 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' (the narrator gives himself and his accomplice the real-life surnames of the outlaws), but 'The Wild Bunch' is as good a starting point as any - the alternation of thunderous gunfights with an unearthly calm; the dead-end masculinity; the ritual finale (when Parker jumps into the dry fountain full of broken beer bottles - ouch!); the rare feel for landscape and architecture.
The long central sequence in Mexico, where the plot overload seems to stand still, is a familiar Peckinpah device, as the men rejuvenate, take stock, reflect, although actual Mexicans are conspicuously sparse. Peckinpah was very much influenced by 'The Treasure of Sierra Madre', and like most Huston films, 'Way' is a hymn to failure.
What's surprising, though, for such a self-regarding wordsmith, is what a great action director McQuarrie is. The gunfights here are truly visceral, very 1970s, exciting and full of crackling guns, the best since 'Heat', and showing most Hollywood action thrillers up for the cartoons they are. The opening fight outside the concert is like a diabolic inversion of 'Grease', while the 'Battleship Potemkin' parody getaway with the pregnant Robin is extraordinary. As is the way the cold modernist sheen a la 'Claire Dolan' gives onto the old-fashioned dustiness of a Western. The music is terrific too, alternating melodramatic squalls of 'Usual Suspects'-like dread, with thrilling castanetas, as if the whole film is just one big corrida.
I'm not able to tell whether 'Way of the Gun' is absurdly complex or foolishly simple. The major problem is the screenplay, which seems desperate to remind us of the plot's metaphysical depth, when, as Keaton and Melville have taught us, action is eloquent enough on its own.
Some have seen the film as a denunciation of violent cinema, cool macho gangster nihilism, as the sterile, masturbatory crooks (the chief of whom can't even have a baby with his wife) is contrasted with the simple values of maternity and fertility - when the enviably calm 'bagman' Joe Sarno walks in on Robin in labour, he seems momentarily struck with awe. He is the only character at the end not tainted by blood - after all, he is the cleaner - and McQuarrie doesn't seem to be making much distinction between the blood of a bursting mother and the wounds of a bunch of gunmen.
If the screenplay never transcends its own gaze, we can always concentrate of McQuarrie's directorial style. Some have compared the film to 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' (the narrator gives himself and his accomplice the real-life surnames of the outlaws), but 'The Wild Bunch' is as good a starting point as any - the alternation of thunderous gunfights with an unearthly calm; the dead-end masculinity; the ritual finale (when Parker jumps into the dry fountain full of broken beer bottles - ouch!); the rare feel for landscape and architecture.
The long central sequence in Mexico, where the plot overload seems to stand still, is a familiar Peckinpah device, as the men rejuvenate, take stock, reflect, although actual Mexicans are conspicuously sparse. Peckinpah was very much influenced by 'The Treasure of Sierra Madre', and like most Huston films, 'Way' is a hymn to failure.
What's surprising, though, for such a self-regarding wordsmith, is what a great action director McQuarrie is. The gunfights here are truly visceral, very 1970s, exciting and full of crackling guns, the best since 'Heat', and showing most Hollywood action thrillers up for the cartoons they are. The opening fight outside the concert is like a diabolic inversion of 'Grease', while the 'Battleship Potemkin' parody getaway with the pregnant Robin is extraordinary. As is the way the cold modernist sheen a la 'Claire Dolan' gives onto the old-fashioned dustiness of a Western. The music is terrific too, alternating melodramatic squalls of 'Usual Suspects'-like dread, with thrilling castanetas, as if the whole film is just one big corrida.