Fatherly Colt, the beginning of the beginnings – Newspaper Kommersant No. 8 (7453) dated 01/18/2023

The western “Echoes of the Past” by Brett Donohoe starring Nicolas Cage is being released. The second attempt of a famous artist to perform in this genre cannot be called a complete failure, but it would be more interesting to see the same story in the hands of a better director, believes Yulia Shagelman.

The fruitful career of Nicolas Cage (today there are 112 titles in the list of his roles on the IMDB website – and six more projects are at different stages of production, so he, apparently, is not going to stop) has always been the subject of close attention of moviegoers. At the same time, since the early 1980s, when Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew made his film debut under a pseudonym in order not to enjoy the privileges associated with the famous surname, this attention has changed color several times. From interest in a talented actor who skillfully chooses scenarios, it has evolved to idle curiosity fueled by social gossip columns, disappointment in the format “why is he doing this to himself and to us” and to that feeling of spellbound numbness with which, even against your will, you stop look at the aftermath of a car accident.

An Oscar winner (he won in 1996 for his role in Mike Figgis’ Leaving Las Vegas), starring with Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Alan Parker, the Coen brothers, and his own uncle, Cage became a surprise in the 90s. an action movie star (Con Air, No Face, Gone in 60 Seconds) and one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood. Then he squandered all his money on crazy purchases like live crocodiles and serial killer mansions, went into debt, got into trouble with the tax office, and began to act in everything that was offered. For many years, his name in the credits became synonymous with thrash, he himself turned into a meme, and the load of eccentric acts began to seep from real life to the screen, for example, in films such as last year’s “The Unbearable Weight of a Great Talent”, where he played a twisted on maximum version of his public persona.

At the same time, Cage combines appearances in such postmodern films and very wild low-budget projects like Mandy (2017) with the voice acting of cartoons and roles in quite traditional, although also inexpensive to produce films, one of which was Echoes of the Past. After all, what could be more traditional than a western – surprisingly, only the second in the actor’s filmography after last year’s film adaptation of John Williams’ classic novel Butcher’s Crossing. But if that picture was distinguished by a revisionist approach, then Brett Donohoe follows the path trodden by the classics of the genre (not to say, blindly imitates them).

Cage’s hero, cold-blooded gunslinger Colton Briggs, we meet as he indifferently watches an execution scene in a small town. He was apparently contracted to ensure its smooth conduct, but as a result of a small turmoil, both the customer and the alleged perpetrator are killed – and the latter, who had just escaped from the noose, is shot by Briggs himself in front of his son. Twenty years later, the former ruthless killer leads a quiet life with his beloved wife (Kerry Knuppe) in another town on the frontier, where he owns a shop and without pleasure, but dutifully obeying the requests of his wife, takes his 12-year-old daughter Brooke (Ryan Kira Armstrong) to school, to which does not experience particularly warm feelings – but in this the girl reciprocates him. One day, while they are both sitting in a shop, their outlying house is visited by a small detachment of thugs who have escaped from prison, who kill Briggs’ wife and leave him a personal message in blood on the barn wall.

Of course, their young blue-eyed leader named James McCallister (Noah Le Gros) is the same but grown up boy from the prologue, whose father was killed by Briggs, and now he is obsessed with revenge. The most annoying thing is that Briggs definitely does not remember him, but nevertheless rushes in pursuit to, in turn, avenge his wife. He has to take his daughter with him, and along the way, some kind of relationship finally begins to develop between them (here, screenwriter Carl Lucas clearly looks back at examples such as “True Courage” with John Wayne).

Briggs teaches Brooke how to properly distribute her forces on the road, build a fire, treat gunshot wounds and, of course, shoot. But the main thing that connects them is a common inability to experience and show emotions in a generally accepted way, even the pain that the death of a loved one and mother caused both. The term “autism spectrum disorder” didn’t exist in those times, of course, but the disorder itself did exist, and the scenes in which Cage and his young colleague get to showcase this side of their characters are the best in the film. Alas, they quickly give way to the standard set of ambushes and shootouts, as well as the exaggerated performance of Le Gros, for which he was inspired either by Leonardo DiCaprio, who played a bad western actor in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, or by Cage himself in his most overblown roles. .