It wasn’t so long ago that Nicolas Cage, his fans, and his publicist-boosted press all lauded the singular performer for never phoning it in. That was three years ago. At the time, Cage had just played a tongue-in-cheek version of himself in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” and was hailed for a demonstrably untrue and largely besides-the-point virtue—always trying. Cage definitely tries in “Gunslingers,” a cheapjack western that features a few other character actor favorites in its ensemble cast, including Stephen Dorff, who puts in more effort than the rest, and Costas Mandylor, who goes as far as he can with a squint and a glower. Heather Graham’s there, too, and she’s not asleep at the wheel either.
Unfortunately, there’s exactly one memorable scene in Gunslingers, and it’s obviously the one where Cage goes full-tilt goofy with an accent that sounds like a laryngitic, born-again Macho Man Randy Savage. You’ll know the scene when you see it.
The rest of “Gunslingers” lacks the elusive intensity that has made Cage such a fascinating personality and actor. The movie’s a tin-eared genre homage with a keen idea—a posse descends on a turn of the century Kentucky town full of fugitives—and not much else going for it. There’s not much to hold onto during the action scenes either, which tend to devolve into confusing, hyper-edited shootouts. Cage’s fellow performers are also not trusted to either deliver their lines or develop their characters in any meaningful way. You can still see them trying, but that doesn’t mean much when the vehicle they’re propping up can’t even coast on fumes.
In “Gunslingers”, the past catches up with wanted man Thomas Keller (Dorff) in the small town of Redemption, a home to Jericho (Mandylor) and Ben (Cage) and Lin (Tzi Ma) and other negligibly developed misfits. Thomas has a bounty on his head, and it’s the “biggest reward ever,” as more than one character says aloud. He’s pursued by Robert (Jeremy Kent Jackson), a mysterious one-eyed gunman, and his posse, as well as Val (Graham), a single mother with a bullet in her leg and a startled-looking daughter (Ava Monroe Tadross) in tow. Robert and his men want Thomas, and they’re willing to uproot the town’s plywood support beams to get him. Jericho and his buddies refuse to hand Thomas over, eventually leading to conflict.
The familiarity of this scenario, along with its type-based characters, may intrigue prospective viewers. Too bad that writer/director Brian Skiba doesn’t do enough to support his cast beyond making them strike action figure poses. Underserved supporting characters don’t fare much better in scenes where they have to establish the emotional and dramatic gravity of their characters’ actions without using prop guns or computer-generated blood.
Jackson’s labored performance stands out, and not in a good way. As Thomas’s and the gang’s main antagonist, Jackson must convince us to invest in the plot. That’s a tall task given how flat and by the numbers most of his dialogue tends to be. He’s also not often blocked or presented in the most dynamic ways, which makes the movie’s choppy pacing that much more frustrating. When we can see him for longer than a moment or two, Jackson tries, but something doesn’t add up. Does he give a bad performance, or is he doing his best despite unforgiving work conditions? It’s genuinely hard to tell, but either way, he’s not alone in his frustrated efforts.
The movie’s busy action scenes also suggest that the makers of “Gunslingers” didn’t know what to do with their cast members. First, we see one of the protagonists either getting ready to shoot or pumping out a few rounds. Then we see the extra they’ve just felled. Then, a cut to another main character, sometimes pursuing somebody from a couple of shots ago, gives the scene a vague narrative shape. As you watch, you realize that it takes more time to suss out what information is meant to be conveyed—Where was that dead guy hiding? And from where did he pick them off?—than enjoying what’s actually depicted.
To be fair, Dorff somehow does more with less screentime and dialogue than most of his colleagues. Cage does, too, though his twitchy performance speaks loudest through cross-shaped sunglasses, jittery body language, and a barely coherent accent. So if you do commit to watching “Gunslingers,” odds are good that you’ll have emotionally checked out long before you get to that one scene. Only Cage’s most diehard cultists will want to go to bat for this performance, and they could easily struggle to accentuate the positive. It’s manic, confounding, and gaspingly funny, too (for a moment), but boy, howdy, so what?
