There's a lot that could have been learned from The Way of the West, unfortunately, the most glaring lesson learned is to never judge a movie by its DVD cover. The cover of The Way of the West, which depicts a ramshackle, Old West-style town in the background, and a gun-slingin' cowboy wearing a duster and cowboy hat in the foreground, is inaccurate, as the film does not take place in an Old West-style town, nor does it have cowboys. It takes place in the late 1800s in the heavily-forested Yukon Territory, and is about a Canadian Mountie. The movie's original title is The Mountie, which is completely spot-on, being about a Mountie. Somebody decided to change the title and overall look of the cover to make U.S. audiences think it's a western movie, which it isn't.
So with that annoyance aside, The Way of the West, stylistically, is a fairly well-done homage to the archetypal western genre. Director Wyeth Clarkson competently tells a tale of a newly-budding town in the Yukon Territory, at times coming impressively close to channeling a Sergio Leone-style pacing that works very well. The film centers on the Canadian Mountie Wade Grayling (Andrew W. Walker), a lawman clearly with demons in his past. Picture Clint Eastwood wearing a red coat. We come to learn Wade's assignment is to survey a large piece of land and small town, mostly tents, for the Queen and the Canadian government before it takes over the land.
Problems start, however, after Wade meets the town's priest, Olaf (Earl Pastko), and discovers that Olaf is in cahoots with a group of dangerous Latvians. Olaf's past, along with his daugther Amethyst's (Jessica Paré), is pretty ugly with the Latvians, so has no choice but to deal with them.
It's when Wade discovers what the dealing is all about that the audience is free to start hating Wade, when he turns from a man upholding the law to a self-righteous jerk. Wade discovers that the town is selling poppy plants to some Latvians, the poppy plant being the source of the opium drug. It's explained to Wade flat-out a few times that this is how the town survives, that this is how they feed the children, and especially, that growing and selling poppy plants isn't illegal. But Wade has his own personal demons surrounding opium, so what does he do? He burns the whole poppy field, claiming it's no way for a town to run. Maybe that's a noble idea for some, but ultimately, it's not Wade's decision.
Wade goes from bad to worse when we get a flashback at the biggest skeleton in his closet: during a close-encounter shootout with a few men, Wade accidentally shot a girl and killed her. Later on, through more flashbacks, we learn why his judgment and reflexes were so stunted that day to cause him to kill the girl, but that just makes it worse. The last nail in the coffin is when Wade admits to an old Mountie friend that he has, referring to the little girl's death, "accepted his punishment" (his punishment was a demotion) and has "done his time," implying that he feels he has paid for his mistake. It's not an original problem for law enforcers -- Reginald VelJohnson in Die Hard made the same mistake, but never once did he claim he's "done his time."
At the heart of the conflict are the poppy plants, and whether or not it's ethical to sell them. During the last thirty minutes, we learn a pretty major fact about the small town, one that takes aim at this poppy plant controversy and completely negates it, possibly leaving the audience wondering why the heck any of the drug dealing is occurring in the first place. So, in addition to building Wade up to a good character and then taking him down several notches by giving him a weird line that clears his conscience, the story centers itself around the drug issue, and then takes the weight of that away, too.
The Way of the West started out with a whole lot of promise. The pacing is pitch-perfect, the scenery is amazing. The story suffers though from ill-conceived characters and a convoluted plot involving secret gold and double-crosses. The Mounties haven't had a lot of popularity in Hollywood, the most popular Mountie film I can think of is Dudley Do-Right. Canada deserves a letter of apology for that, but producing a Mountie-centric movie like The Way of the West isn't exactly hastening that letter.
DVD Bonus Features
Along with the trailer there are alternate openings to the film as well as deleted scenes. There's also a pretty thorough section of cast interviews.
"The Way of the West" is on sale July 26, 2011 and is rated R. Western. Directed by Wyeth Clarkson. Written by Wyeth Clarkson, Charles Johnston, Grant Sauve. Starring Andrew W Walker, Earl Pastko, George Buza, Jessica Pare.
