The Way of the Gun
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| The Way of the Gun | |
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 "The Way of the Gun" movie poster |
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| Directed by | Christopher McQuarrie |
| Produced by | Kenneth Kokin |
| Written by | Christopher McQuarrie |
| Starring | Benicio Del Toro Ryan Phillippe James Caan Juliette Lewis Taye Diggs Nicky Katt Geoffrey Lewis |
| Music by | Joe Kraemer |
| Cinematography | Dick Pope |
| Editing by | Stephen Semel |
| Distributed by | Artisan |
| Release date(s) | 2000 (United States) |
| Running time | 119 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $9 million |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Way of the Gun is a 2000 film, directed by Christopher McQuarrie and starring Ryan Phillippe, Benicio Del Toro, Juliette Lewis, Taye Diggs, Nicky Katt, and James Caan.
The film has been described as 'a gangster film with a brain'.[citation needed] Many scenes are characterized by prolonged sections of eloquent speech between protagonists, and McQuarrie himself has stated that the film's purpose lies in the hospital shootout where the shootout is not shown.[citation needed]
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[edit] Plot Synopsis
Parker (Ryan Phillippe) and his buddy, Longbaugh (Benicio Del Toro) are two people who have left the path that most people follow through life. They can't stand the restraints that society places upon them, but like all people, they need money.
One way they get money is by donating sperm. While waiting at the sperm bank they overhear a telephone conversation in which a person mentions that a young lady is being paid 1 million dollars to have a baby for a couple. They also hear the name of the doctor. They decide to kidnap the woman.
Outside the doctor's office they are waiting as the girl pulls up in a limo with two bodyguards. In a 2nd car are two more bodyguards, Jeffers (Taye Diggs) and Obecks (Nicky Katt). The doctor sees the girl, her name is Robin (Juliette Lewis). As she is leaving, the bodyguards ride down the elevator with her. When they get off, they notice Parker approaching them. The two bodyguards step in front of Robin and start walking towards Parker. As they get a short distance from her, Longbaugh steps from behind a post and puts a gun to her head. It is essentially a stand off and so Parker and his buddy slowly walk away, leaving Robin. The bodyguards put her on the elevator and follow Parker and Longbaugh.
There is a tremendous amount of shooting and instead of riding up the elevator, Robin gets back off. She tries to sneak out the building but is caught by Parker. Two of the four bodyguards are dead and after a long chase, Parker and Longbaugh get away with the a very pregnant Robin.
It turns out that the millionaire and his wife who had hired Robin to have the baby, work for the Mafia. The million dollars is not his. He has borrowed it from his employers without them knowing it.
Joe Sarno (James Caan) is the bagman working for the millionaire. He meets with the millionaire and the two surviving bodyguard and they discuss how to solve the problem. During the meeting, Parker calls and demands 15 million dollars in ransom which the millionaire agrees to pay. The doctor is to be the go-between with the money. It also turns out that the doctor is the son of the millionaire who hired Robin.
Jeffers is having an affair with the millionaire's wife. He and Obecks decide that in the exchange of money, they will kill everyone and keep the money themselves.
The drop is to take place in Mexico. The two bodyguards and the doctor go in one car. Sarno goes in a truck with the 15 million dollars.
While they are heading to Mexico, Parker, Longbaugh and Robin are in a small hotel room. Robin is left a lone for a short time accidentally, and when the boys come back, they notice that she has a shotgun. After threatening to shoot them. Robin calls the police. Parker and Longbaugh escape when they hear the police, with Robin walking out unharmed.
The police show up. Shortly thereafter, the doctor and bodyguards show up. The police have their guns drawn on the bodyguards when all of a sudden, shots are fired from a different location. Parker and Longbaugh are on a distant hill, shooting. Two policemen are killed and one of the bodyguards is wounded. Jeffers, the doctor and Robin all travel south, away from the border to an unknown location.
Parker and Longbaugh take the wounded bodyguard and torture him until he tells where they've taken Robin. Sarno also had a man there who was wounded but still follows the bodyguard, doctor and Robin.
The place is a large hotel/brothel and Robin is confined to one of the rooms. Her pregnancy is extremely difficult and her doctor performs a cesarean. While this is going on, Parker and Longbaugh enter the Brothel and try to get Robin. They finally get into her room, and see the cesarean taking place along with the bodyguard.
It looks like all is lost except, right in the middle of his work, the doctor pulls a gun out of his bag and shoots Jeffers in the throat, killing him.
It turns out the artificial insemination failed. The baby is the doctors child. That makes the baby the grandson of the millionaire.
Meanwhile, Sarno shows up with five other men. A huge gunfight breaks out and all the men are killed by Parker and Longbaugh except for Sarno. Parker has been wounded several times and Sarno cripples him by shooting him in the leg. Sarno then faces Longbaugh, and shoots him 3 or 4 times in the knees. Both Parker and Longbaugh are now lying in the dust out front of the Brothel. Longbaugh speaks heavily, "Until that day, then." Sarno, while walking off with the money, replies "Until that day."
Sarno places a phone call and an ambulance shows up. The ambulance picks up Robin with her new baby, her doctor, the 15 million and Sarno drives off and leaves Parker and Longbaugh to die.
In the last scene we see the millionaire and his wife holding the new baby. She turns to her husband and says, "I'm pregnant."
[edit] Production
After winning an Academy Award for The Usual Suspects, Christopher McQuarrie assumed that he'd have no problem making his next movie "and then you slowly start to realize no one in Hollywood is interested in making your film, they're interested in making their films." [1] He spent years as a script doctor while trying to get financing for an epic biopic of Alexander the Great for Warner Brothers before finally realizing that he "had to make a film with some commercial success to be taken seriously." [2] He approached 20th Century Fox and told them that he would be willing to write and direct a movie for any budget they would be willing to give him as long as he had complete creative control. "Fox told me to get fucked. No money. No control. No nothing. They didn't want my input, they just wanted me. For nothing." [2]
McQuarrie met Benicio Del Toro for coffee and he asked the screenwriter why he hadn't made another crime film. McQuarrie replied that he didn't want to be typecast as "a crime guy" [2] but realized that he had nothing to lose, "unemployed and ready to make trouble." [2] Del Toro convinced him to write a crime film on his own terms because he would get the least amount of interference from a studio. McQuarrie was interested in making a movie "that you can follow characters who don't go out of their way to ingratiate themselves to you, who aren't traditionally sympathetic." [1]
McQuarrie started to write the script and "the first thing I did was to write a list of every taboo, everything I knew a cowardly executive would refuse to accept from a 'sympathetic' leading man." [1] The first ten pages were a prologue, a trailer to another movie with Parker and Longbaugh (the real last names of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and was "to be shot as slick and hip as possible. Guy Ritchie and Michael Bay but with horrible, unspeakable acts of violence and degradation." [2] During pre-production, McQuarrie realized that this was too extreme and cut it out. He and Del Toro gave the script to several high-profile actors at the time all of whom turned them down. Ryan Phillippe wanted to change the direction of the career and "was besieged with choice offers, and we didn't want him, but he would not take no for an answer." [2]
Although he originally had a considerable amount of dialogue in the film, Del Toro suggested that the "less is more" approach might work better for his character Longbaugh. The gun battle sequences throughout the film were choreographed by McQuarrie's brother, a former Navy SEAL. Much of the film was filmed in the streets of downtown Salt Lake City. The ground-level floor of the doctor's office where the abduction scene and shootout was filmed is actually the historic Salt Lake Hardware building.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Olsen, Mark. "Fist in the Face", Sight and Sound, November 2000.
- ^ a b c d e f Konow, David. "The Way of the Screenwriter: An Interview with Christopher McQuarrie", Creative Screenwriting, September/October 2000.
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