I could see the city lights

Each Day, A Film:
February 9th, 2012

Ugh. Yes, this assignment is massively behind. More than I realised, annoyingly.

There's only one way around this: let's start talking about the awesome films rather than just picking one out of a virtual hat. Let's  break this funk, get out of this place, and move on up.

Let's do that with Way of the Gun.



I mean, why not? It's no more bizarre than many of the other choices out there.

One thing about living in England pre-the-1990s was that, frankly, you took what you could get regarding video and latterly DVD releases that weren't mainstream, guaranteed blockbusters that would be on the new releases shelf at, well, Blockbusters.

For a while, during the last merry-go-round on the degree carousel, I ended up working in Marketing and PR. I'll be honest; I sucked at it (sorry, Reuben) because, at that time, I really didn't give a shit. I think this is something that can easily - and perhaps lazily - be filed under the folly of youth, but really, I was - as many of us are at that age - a bit of a lazy dickpiece.

Now, the interesting thing is that the company I was supposedly doing independent PR was the then-nascent Lovefilm, which is now an entirely different enterprise, to be sure. Back then, it was a small quasi-independent distribution company, which for some reason thought it was a good idea to hire a student at London universities (or maybe just our university, I was never sure) in PR and to get them to hire a 'friend', then to organise film events or simply to convince masses of students to go see a film.

Have you ever tried to 'convince' a 'student' to do anything? It pretty much doesn't work, even if it's for fucking free, so this was pretty much a non-starter. Especially when the product was designed to appeal to the edge-of-market viewer, who's not going to be ordered around no way no how anyhow.

Of all the films I didn't manage to help out representing at the time - and this was before I saw the light in film terms, so, well, shit - Way of the Gun was certainly one of them. And as part of this, or maybe in the student journalism role - my memory's hazy on the how, exactly, but it happened - I received a video copy, then filed it away.

Fast forward a year or so and I must have got round to watching it with a film-watching friend, and, well, it was kind of a revelation.

Over the last few years, I've become a devotee of spaghetti westerns, to the extent that I can be generously mocked for my love for Sergio Leone films. But to me, the western is something oddly pure; the plots are basically men with plans and guns encounter issues and shoot at them; there's no 'emotions', no 'complications' and, more often than not, no 'romance'.

Westerns are a fine thing, and underneath all the trappings of a kidnap / action movie / drama, Way of the Gun is a western, whether it intends to be or not.

Plus, it's a film where Sarah Silverman is credited as "Raving Bitch".

What more do you need to know?

Well, finally, it's another career intersection; Ryan Phillippe on the way up, Benicio Del Toro on the lateral, Juliette Lewis... Well, who knows in that case; James Caan basically out-acting everyone else there, and Taye Diggs, who must have been thinking maybe if I do this, I can end up in Equilibrium!