Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro in "The Way of the Gun."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, we gives this film a: Stars: Ryan Phillippe, Benicio Del Toro, James Caan, Juliette Lewis, Taye Diggs Director: Christopher McQuarrie Rated: R Length: 105 mintues

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Marshall Fine
Gannett News Service

(September 8, 2000) -- It's the same old story: A screenwriter wins an Oscar and immediately lands a deal to direct his own script the next time -- showing just how important the collaborative vision of a director can be.

Such is the case with "The Way of the Gun," a film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who won an Academy Award for writing "The Usual Suspects." There undoubtedly is an intriguing film lurking within the shambles of this film, but McQuarrie wasn't the director who could carve away the fat to get to the meat.

"The Way of the Gun" might be said to belong to the expanding genre that wants to be film noir but winds up instead as film-festival noir. Yes, it suffers from a distinct case of Tarantinitis, a syndrome that tries to blend the darkest human impulses with quirky character traits and pop-culture references, producing a whole that's greater than its parts. It's nearly always fatal -- to the filmmaker.

Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro play Parker and Longbaugh, two distinctly small-time criminals whose names (not coincidentally) are the same as the real names of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Fed up with their lowly existence, they hit upon a get-rich-quick scheme:

They will kidnap the pregnant surrogate mother who carries the baby of a rich couple and ransom her and the child.

But the rich couple has unexpected connections. A crooked developer with Mob ties, the would-be father (Scott Wilson) summons his chief fixer, Joe Sarno (James Caan), to bring back the girl and the baby. And Sarno has more resources at his disposal than Parker and Longbaugh have dreamt of. McQuarrie, however, is less interested in the chase than the participants; he saps any tension from the film by focusing on Parker's growing infatuation with Robin (Juliette Lewis), the surrogate mom. When she reveals that she wants to keep her baby (there are other secrets as well, that are even less compelling), he finds himself on a mission in the name of motherhood.

Too much of this film is set in dank, dirty hotel rooms and dusty, desolate roadsides. You need a lot more snappy dialogue than this film has to dawdle so deliberately and have a prayer of getting away with it. Del Toro, with his sleepy eyes and offhand demeanor, and Phillippe, with his baby-faced good looks, make intriguingly mismatched partners and they certainly know how to play for incongruity.

Caan knows how to underplay, but also how to juice up a scene, though the material is never up to his energy level.

But McQuarrie ultimately maroons them in a dirty Mexican hotel for perhaps the least-involving shootout of the summer film season. This is not surprising because "The Way of the Gun" is shooting blanks.