BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., Aug. 28, 2000 — A kidnapper threatens to shoot his pregnant captive unless her bodyguards back off. The bodyguards, unintimidated, point their guns at the woman’s unborn child.
A car chase ensues at five miles an hour, feet peddling alongside the vehicles as they roll down the alley.
A money launderer’s hired gun calls his henchman to organize an ambush and the cell phones refuse to work.
In other words, this ain’t your regular action movie.
In “The Way of the Gun,” Parker (Ryan Phillippe) and Longbaugh (Benicio Del Toro) decide to kidnap a surrogate mother (Juliette Lewis) about to deliver a baby for a wealthy man (Scott Wilson) and his trophy wife (Kristin Lehman). It’s only after the crime that they learn of the husband’s empire, and soon they are pursued not only by his hired guns (Taye Diggs and Nicky Katt) but his longtime “bag man” (James Caan).
The film is helmed by Christopher McQuarrie, who won an Oscar in 1995 for writing “The Usual Suspects.” Making his directorial debut, McQuarrie’s script impressed his cast for venturing into uncharted action territory.
“So many of these movies that are action-oriented, you see all the stuff that is so unrealistic,” says Phillippe. “And we wanted to make as realistic an action movie as possible.”
Adds Lewis, “I found myself having to ask Chris to explain, ‘Why is she saying this? What does this mean?’ ’cause he’s the writer and he knows all the undercurrents and subplots. And it was so exciting to do a movie that’s so rich in subtext cause that’s rare these days.”
Central to the action is the relationship between Phillippe and Del Toro, who previously worked with McQuarrie on “The Usual Suspects.” Del Toro felt comfortable enough to suggest the superslow car chase, and he and Phillippe worked together to create the chemistry two longtime partners would have.
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“When you work with an actor like me and Ryan … what you want to expect is the other actor is gonna watch your back, and that’s basically what we did,” Del Toro says. “He watched my back sometimes and … sometimes he’ll go …[makes a face] ‘I don’t know if I believe that,’ so I say ‘Oh let me try this now.’ … That was the kind of relationship we had.”
Phillippe and Del Toro say that despite their characters’ flaws and penchance for guns, Parker and Longbaugh are just two guys trying to survive.
“They don’t want to get into trouble, really. From the beginning when they’re gonna kidnap the girl, the first thing they do is, like a pro, they say ‘This is gonna get dangerous here, let’s quit’ and I think that’s a good sign of two characters right there,” Del Toro says.
Del Toro also shares a couple weighty scenes with screen veteran James Caan, who, while playing the mercenary, also acts as somewhat of a voice of reason.
“He’s almost the hero of the piece,” Caan says. “Through experience and survival, he has instincts that are honed. He’s very good at what he does.”
Caan says he had fun keeping his younger co-stars loose on the set, but it hardly became necessary toward the end of production, when unexpected celebrations were constantly in order.
“[Juliette] got married, Chris McQuarrie got married, Ryan Phillippe had a little girl,” Diggs listed. “Nicky Katt got married”
“It was so filled with rich relationships,” Lewis added. “It’s just a rare thing.”
“Cause when everybody’s happy on the set,” Diggs laughed. “It makes for – ”
” – A great filmmaking experience!” Lewis finishes.
“The Way of the Gun” targets audiences Sept. 8.
