Live By The Gun, Get Shot Repeatedly In The Legs By The Gun

'To tell the truth, I don't think this is a brains sort of operation.'

A coworker loaned The Way of the Gun to me, since there aren’t many diversions where I’m living right now. Longbaugh (Benicio del Toro) and Parker (Ryan Philippe) are a couple of drifters, looking for that shot at a big score. By chance, while waiting to donate at sperm bank for the cash, they overhear about young woman (Robin, played by Juliette Lewis) being paid 1 million dollars to be a surrogate mother for this couple, Hale and Francesca Chidduck. The couple are apparently not only rich enough to afford that, they can also afford a team of bodyguards to accompany her everywhere, and crazy enough to essentially keep the girl in their house, like a prisoner they hear, for the duration of the pregnancy, which is almost over. These two take it in their heads two kidnap her, and they’re aided by two factors: One, Robin’s grown attached to the child, and ignores one of the bodyguard’s (played by Taye Diggs) orders in favor of trying to escape, which only serves to get her immediately captured. Two, the bodyguards are even bigger incompetent dolts than our kidnappers.

Of course, it rapidly becomes apparent that anyone with the resources to spend this kind of money on a surrogate pregnancy is also the sort of person with the resources to ensure people who mess with them regret it. James Caan shows up, talking a lot of stuff about being a survivor, and an adjudicator, and so on, and he starts bringing his guys in to resolve things. Meanwhile, the expectant birth mother is trying to work on Parker to get him to release her, to Longbaugh’s consternation.

It took me awhile to get into the movie, because del Toro and Philippe are such unlikeable guys. They get their asses kicked by an entire mob full of people outside a nightclub at the start, and I was completely OK with it. But it’s one of those films were everyone is scheming, everyone is working behind everyone else’s backs, everyone has secrets, and everyone has a backstory, usually just hinted at. What it does well is it just gives those hints, but the actors are very good at filling the role. They don’t feel like they’re playing someone who just came into being at the moment the film starts, they actually feel like a person who is the way they are in the movie because of a lifetime of experiences and choices prior to that, if that makes sense, and the hints help explain their choices in a way. We see and hear just enough, that I’m intrigued. I want to know more about all of them. What they did, where they went. Caan’s character has a scar on his neck, probably a near miss from a bullet, but maybe not.

I especially like how Francesca, is so often shown in the background of shots, or watching, unseen, from above. So much of this has been put in motion by her, her desire to be a mom, but not carry the child herself, her indifference to most anyone or anything but her desires, and the fact almost no one seems aware of how much she’s pulling strings. All these other people are plotting, scheming, threatening, thinking they’ve got things in hand, and she’s just drifting around the periphery, observing it all, stepping in a couple of times to nudge things. Robin’s placed a lot more centrally in most shots, since she – or the thing in her belly - is what this is all about, but she has a similar mettle to her. There are quite a few shots where she’s sitting, and it could look like she’s just focusing on blocking out the pain (all this stress so close to delivery is not good), but she’s thinking, focusing on something we can’t see yet. A plan, an opportunity, she’s trying to make happen or get ready to seize. It’s a good performance. 

I did laugh when Parker dove for cover in a dry fountain and wound up with a bunch of broken glass in his arm. I don't think it was even a trap, I think the bar customers had just been throwing their bottles in there for a long time. Which makes it one of those funny happenstances you see in movie battles sometimes.