Writer Christopher McQuarrie, who scripted the amazing "The Usual Suspects," gets a chance to direct here thanks to that film's success. He immediately let's you know that "The Way of the Gun" isn't just a "guy film," it's rabidly testosterone driven. It's homophobia comes into play immediately in a pointless opening fight scene that spews gay insults (and violence against women) like so much vomit. Then Ryan Phillippe continues the film delivering one of the most repulsive, putrid and fervently anti-gay dialogues ever allowed to despoil the silver screen. As a gay man, I wasn't just offended. I was OUTRAGED! This is inexcusable hatred being pumped into the American consciousness without a thought to it's consequence. My only reason to continue to watch the film was to justify my immediate response that the film was a piece of shit. I was not disappointed.

McQuarrie proves himself to be a putrid, unintelligent, unimaginative, copycat who suckles like a baby on Tarantino's teat. This film is so grotesque and so vehemently antisocial that I cannot imagine anyone but the most ignorant and retarded frat boys falling under it's spell. It's a shameful waste of talent and celluloid.

McQuarrie creates a world of the most typical and cinematically derisive kind. He peoples it with 90's Tarantino criminals (who refer to themselves by codenames - not new), cold and calculating rich people (there's a new concept - NOT), aging professional criminals (hey - let's have this one play Russian roulette to show how he feels), and ignorant women. Juliette Lewis' character is so one- dimensional and so annoying that I kept wishing that one of the other characters would kill her like they kept promising to do.

McQuarrie, who certainly has a tough act to follow after "Suspects," proves himself nothing but a sophomoric hack here. One imagines he was so drunk with the power and acclaim that he achieved thanks to his first big script, that his head was too polluted to even think about writing more. "The Way of the Gun" seems like some sort of putrid crap he wrote in college and then quietly stashed in a drawer for a while. This is the kind of shit that would get you laughed out of film schools these days - Well, at least the good film schools. and we see every plot twist coming a mile off.

"The Way of the Gun" is a horrible film. Shame on all the people involved for making it. This refuse isn't even worthy enough to be called "product."

Note:

Also with James Caan, Taye Diggs, and Nicky Katt.

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