The Western That Killed Nicolas Cage's Oscar Comeback Is Now on Tubi

He'd picked up critical momentum with Pig, had a meta moment in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and was finally being taken seriously again. Then The Old Way happened.

A Western revenge tale with a classic setup—grizzled gunslinger, dead wife, daughter with a pistol—it sounded like the kind of gritty genre work Cage could sink his teeth into. Instead, it got shredded by critics, earning a 36% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and quietly disappeared… until now.

The film is currently streaming for free on Tubi, and some viewers are revisiting it with a mix of curiosity and confusion: Was it really that bad, or just a misunderstood throwback?

Let's break down the facts:

• Title: The Old Way
• Release date: January 6, 2023
• Director: Brett Donowho
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Genre: Action / Western
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 36%
• Starring: Nicolas Cage, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Noah Le Gros

The story follows Colton Briggs (Cage), a former gunslinger trying to live a peaceful life until his past comes knocking. After tragedy strikes, he and his young daughter set out on a revenge mission—something that should feel classic, but ends up feeling recycled. Critics pointed out the film's heavy borrowing from genre staples like Unforgiven, True Grit, and Once Upon a Time in the West, without offering anything new.

And that's the central problem.

The Old Way doesn't just wear its influences on its sleeve—it's basically stitched together from them. The pacing is rushed, the dialogue thin, and the emotional beats don't land. The father-daughter dynamic, which should carry the story, comes off flat and underdeveloped.

The movie tries to juggle gritty violence, character bonding, and a Western aesthetic in just over an hour and a half—and it shows. There's simply not enough space for real depth, especially in the daughter's arc. Her transformation from grieving child to expert sharpshooter happens so fast, there's barely time for her to mourn, let alone develop.

That said, there is a certain curiosity in watching Nicolas Cage play it straight in a cowboy hat. He's not the problem here. The script is.

As one critic put it, The Old Way feels like "a Cliff Notes version of better Westerns."

Whether this film actually "killed" Cage's comeback is debatable—he's been back before, and he'll be back again. But The Old Way certainly stalled the momentum. And now, with the film resurfacing on Tubi, audiences can see for themselves what went wrong.