Its criminal story has a start that keeps me interested until half an hour in, but then its path loses its degree of effect between violent shootouts, weak characters and a boring plot, in general, about hellish pregnancies. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 2, 2023

We can still smirk at the flashy mechanics of "The Usual Suspects" and justly so. But "The Way of the Gun" leaves us a little more stone-faced and somber, contemplating all we've denied ourselves because we feel somehow incapable or unworthy.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 8, 2020

Outrageous, unrelenting and blood-soaked.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 25, 2019

The new director's pacing runs slack sometimes and never quite achieves the quality of taut suspense, but there is so much promise and the script is so much better than most that it's a pleasure to watch.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 18, 2019

It's good fun for bad boys.

| Jun 18, 2019

Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote The Usual Suspects, has made a film that I admire more than I love, whose ending makes me recoil emotionally, even as I recommend the thing.

| Jun 18, 2019

The Way of the Gun is doomy trash, a blood-soaked saga of remorseless killers and natural-born blatherers. I'm sure I've seen worse movies, but nothing so steadfastly unpleasant comes to mind.

| Jun 17, 2019

McQuarrie's script has some wonderfully ripe gangster dialogue, and as you'd expect, the characters and situations are never quite who and what they seem. But the payoff is blunted by the preposterous -- and unnecessarily gory -- shootouts.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 17, 2019

Like a director who's budgeted a helicopter and can't bear not to use it, McQuarrie can't help larding his directorial debut with trimmings from far superior crime dramas, old and new.

| Jun 17, 2019

Packaged with solid acting, an edgy western setting, and a complex yet intriguing weave of stories, this movie ends up being pretty entertaining.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 17, 2019

What aims at being terrifying is just loud and goofy.

| Jun 17, 2019

A grisly mix of carnage, torture, backroom surgery and painful dialogue.

| Jun 17, 2019

Before it fires off a few too many volleys of bullets for its own good, The Way of the Gun rolls out as a noirish, contemporary crime drama with a cool, retro-Western air.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 17, 2019

Far more troubling than technical deficiencies is the cynicism of The Way of the Gun, which trots out the cliches of gratuitous violence and nihilism without considering them in a fresh or critical way.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jun 17, 2019

Devoid of even one sympathetic character, sluggishly paced, and full of unnecessary subplots and supporting players, The Way Of The Gun is bad enough to suggest that, three films into his career, McQuarrie's best moments are already behind him.

| Jun 17, 2019

Anyone expecting the devious subtlety of Suspects will be hugely disappointed by this.

| Jun 17, 2019

It is evil because secretly it does not know what it is. It is evil because it is adrift in a world that is too opiated to confront its soulless convictions. It is evil because it comes from a place that has confused the fantastical and the realistic.

| Jun 17, 2019

The violence here seems about par for the course with this sort of film, while the thin characterizations and pulp-fiction setting don't allow for any real emotional impact.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 17, 2019

A lot of uninteresting and unpleasant people torture, abuse, and fire guns at a lot of other uninteresting and unpleasant people, in a repulsive, interminable would-be crime thriller by writer-director Christopher McQuarrie.

| Jun 13, 2019

The plot is almost as convoluted as the story in The Usual Suspects, but McQuarrie substitutes revolting buckets of blood for the style and wit of the earlier movie.

| Jun 18, 2012