Hard to believe but Nicolas Cage has never starred in a Western, until now. The Old Way, in theaters and streaming on demand, features Cage as a ruthless killer, hell bent on revenge, with his tween daughter — played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong — in tow.

When asked by ABC Audio why this is his first foray into the genre, Cage didn’t have an answer, but said it was something he’d always wanted to do.

“I grew up watching great movies like Once Upon a Time in the West with Charles Bronson as Harmonica, and I certainly wanted to homage him and that performance, that movie,” he explains. “So yeah, you’re going to pay me to dress the way I like to dress and wear a cowboy hat and homage some of my favorite movie stars. Well, hell, yeah, I’m there. My stomach rumbles like anyone else’s.”

As for why the 59-year-old actor chose this as his first Western, he shares, “I like family dramas, and what was at the heart of this Western, traditional Western really, was this unusual relationship between two social misfits who happen to be biological father and daughter, but both have this inability to feel love, and propensity towards violence. And yet somehow on through this tragedy and through this road trip, they go on together, they learn to love. And that to me was a had that that that had some my heartstrings for me.”

The Old Way also stars Noah Le Gros, Clint Howard, Abraham Benrubi and Nick Searcy.

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