Nicolas Cage has starred in 112 films since the start of his film career in 1982 Fast times at Ridgemont High. But there is something immediately distinguishable about his latest release, The old way.
It is his very first western.
“I always thought I could wear the boots and the hat,” Cage, 59, tells us in a new interview. “You know, I grew up in California. I know people laugh at that, but that’s about as western as you can get. I live in Nevada. It’s not like I’m playing Hamlet. It’s not like I’m in medieval England. So I thought it was a good match.
“And I’ve been scratching my head as to why it took [so long]. I mean, I’ve been doing this since I was 15. I’ve been doing this for almost 45 years. I’ve done over a hundred movies and this is the first time someone actually invites me to do [a Western]. I thought, ‘I might as well do it now before it’s too late.’”
Cage plays Colton Briggs, a former notorious cold-blooded marksman who has settled into the Quiet Life and manages a merchant shop and lives at home with his wife (Kerry Knuppe) and daughter (Ryan Keira Armstrong). However, Briggs is forced back into his gun-slinging ways when a gang of thugs raid his residence and kill his wife – even taking his child with them to exact revenge.
The experience was everything Cage hoped for, he says, pointing to the one classical performance that influenced him The old way.
“I loved it. I mean, I grew up watching [them]. My favorite Western performance is Charles Bronson [as Harmonica] in Once upon a Time in the West. That’s one of my favorite movies ever made, really if not my favorite. And he could do so much with so little. There was only something majestic and something more eerie about his calm. I wanted to try [pay] pay homage to it, or come as close to it as possible. I don’t know if I did or not. Because he was quite remarkable at that. But it was always on my mind, his performance in that. It felt great. I mean, I even modeled the hat after his hat in that movie. It had to be perfectly balanced. I did not want to [have] one of those stupid 10-gallon cowboy hats.
Even more so than the time-honored genre that Cage first dipped his boots into, the veteran Leaving Las Vegas and Face/Off actor was drawn to the father-daughter story at the center of the Carl W. Lucas-written, Brett Donowho-directed film.
“What really pushed me to do the movie was that relationship of two social misfits who just happen to be father and daughter,” he says. “Yes, they are a family, but they both have this condition, which is never mentioned, that prevents them from feeling. And at the same time they have a tendency to violence. So somehow these two misfits who are biological father and daughter on this tragedy and on this road trip learn to love, and that’s what really brought me in.
And yes, Cage admits he was reminded of that other time he played a violent social misfit dad with a violent social misfit daughter, like Big Daddy opposite Chloë Grace Moretz’s Hit-Girl in the 2010 comic book fave Super awesome.
“It [crossed my mind] quite a bit after I made the movie,” he says. “Like I said, what was in the script that compelled me to say yes was the father-daughter relationship. But then it occurred to me, ‘My god, I’ve already done something like that Super awesome with Chloe.’ And I thought, ‘Well, that worked… Let’s try it [it again].’ And I’m glad I did.”
The old way Now playing in select cities and premiering on video on demand on Friday, January 13.
Watch the trailer:
