Nicolas Cage's First Western Was A Critical And Box Office Disaster

Nicolas Cage got his start acting back in the early 1980s, but he didn't star in his first Western film until the 2020s with "The Old Way." The movie was shot before but released after his 2022 Western, "Butcher's Crossing" which is probably for the best since "Butcher's Crossing" made for a solid debut oater. "The Old Way," on the other hand, turned out to be a major anticlimax: After being given a limited release in the Netherlands, Russia, and the United Kingdom, it only made $59,729 at the box office. Critics hated it, too.

Cage himself was enjoying a bit of a renaissance at the time that "Butcher's Crossing" and "The Old Way" arrived. Having starred in his fair share of schlock in the 2000s, the actor started to turn things around with his work in David Gordon Green's unfairly overlooked 2013 drama "Joe," which featured a wonderfully understated Cage performance. He soon returned to prominence with a standout turn in 2018's "Mandy" before giving one of his best performances in 2021's "Pig." More high-profile creative successes like "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" in 2022 and 2023's "Dream Scenario" meant that, by the early 2020s, Cage was no longer a punchline.

"The Old Way" didn't exactly help maintain that momentum, though. The Western, which ultimately hit theaters in 2023, saw Cage play Colton Briggs, a gunfighter who gives up his violent ways to settle down with his wife and try to live on the straight and narrow. Naturally, his quietude doesn't last long, and Briggs is soon compelled to embrace his old ways after a ghost from his past surfaces. It all made for a film that, according to The Times' Kevin Maher, saw Cage revert "back in Z-list mode."

"The Old Way" is directed by Brett Donowho, who has overseen several B-movie and/or indie projects in his time, including a film from the late-career Bruce Willis oeuvre titled "Acts of Violence." That particular misfire only managed to nudge the all-powerful Tomatometer to 7%, and while "The Old Way" performed better, it still wasn't exactly a critical triumph.

As Colton Briggs, Nicolas Cage is in full Charles Bronson mode. After Briggs' wife is killed by the son of a man Briggs previously shot, Cage's reformed killer sets out with his daughter for vengeance. It's a fairly straightforward Old West revenge tale that's noteworthy simply due to the fact it was Cage's first ever Western.

Asked why it took so long for him to front an oater, Cage told Forbes it was purely a case of never having been approached. "I don't recall ever being offered a Western," he admitted. "I've been doing this since I was 15. It's getting to be almost 45 years now, and I am as mystified as anybody else. I'm scratching my head." The actor also spoke about his influences for the film, citing Bronson in "Once Upon a Time in the West" as having a major impact on him. Cage previously spoke to /Film about how Sergio Leone's celebrated 1968 Western affected him, especially Bronson's performance as gunslinger Harmonica. "I grew up watching that," he explained. "When I got invited to do Colton Briggs, yeah, he was always on my mind. I don't know if I got close to that, but that's certainly what I was aspiring to." Unfortunately, critics didn't seem too taken with Cage's Bronson impression.

"The Old Way" experienced problems long before it made its ignominious debut. Nicolas Cage became one of several actors to storm off set during filming when armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed discharged a firearm near the actor. That's the same Gutierrez-Reed who was later found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison after cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot by Alec Baldwin on the set of "Rust." Not the most auspicious start for Cage's Western, then.

Things didn't get much better after that. Not only did the film debut to paltry box office returns, it made just $1,301 in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, critics exacted their own form of retribution on the film, savaging Cage's Western for daring to introduce itself in the first place. Christy Lemire of FilmWeek remarked simply, "It's just so bland and cheap-looking," while The Daily Beast's Nick Schager urged readers to "consider it a bump in the road of Cage's long-overdue return-to-the-mainstream resurgence." Still, Noel Murray of the Los Angeles Times seemed to like it, writing, "Ultimately, this is a movie with real personality, about a man coming to realize with no small amazement that he has an actual legacy to pass on — even if it's a grim one."

Even with the odd positive review, however, "The Old Way" couldn't match Cage's other Western of the era. "Butcher's Crossing" is a bleak, brutal, abstract Western that earned itself a 73% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Though it was shot after "The Old Way," it came out a year before it, and it's a good thing too, considering it now technically marks Cage's debut in the genre.