Before we do anything else, we need to talk about Nicolas Cage’s voice in the new Western Gunslingers. Playing a reformed outlaw who won’t pick up a gun but carries a Bible around everywhere, Cage alters his speaking voice so that it’s incredibly (and hilariously) low and raspy — like if Batman caught laryngitis. The in-movie reason for this is left a bit vague; he’s also coughing at one point, so maybe it’s a sign of lingering illness or injury. Of course, the real reason for it is that Nic Cage likes to … shall we say … try things in his movies. So if you’re firing up this film just to see Cage do some bizarre stuff, you can skip the rest of this review and consider this movie time well spent. However, if that sounds like your own personal hell, then by all means, look elsewhere for your next Western fix. And, if you’re not sure, well, then that’s why I’m here. There’s actually more to unpack than you’d think with Gunslingers, a movie that comes pretty close to being a fun watch but is ultimately waylaid by a few catastrophic casting decisions.
‘Gunslingers’ Stars Stephen Dorff as a Wanted Man in a Town Full of Wanted Men

For starters, Cage isn’t even the lead in Gunslingers. That responsibility falls to Stephen Dorff, the 51-year-old journeyman actor (and one-time Blade villain) who raised a lot of eyebrows in 2019 when he popped up in a lead role in Season 3 of True Detective and gave a riveting performance that had a lot of folks asking, “Wait a minute, this guy can be this good when given the right material?!” Unfortunately, outside a short arc on The Righteous Gemstones, that didn’t really lead to many higher-profile gigs, and Dorff has continued plugging away in supporting roles in smaller films and larger roles in genre-y video-on-demand releases.
In Gunslingers, Dorff plays Thomas Keller, a Northerner who is wanted for killing a member of the powerful Rockefeller clan in 1903 New York City. Four years later, he has escaped to the town of Redemption, Kentucky, a ramshackle community completely made up of criminals. The town has a system where wanted men and women are performatively “executed” in a faked hanging (which is documented by Cage, the town photographer) and then welcomed to join the community, basically making the entire town one big hideout. (Note that the late year and the location make this more of a “Southern” than a true classic Western, but don’t worry — all Western tropes will end up applying.)
Unfortunately for Thomas and the town as a whole, it doesn’t take long for two different parties to show up looking for him. The first is Heather Graham, playing a mysterious woman with a young daughter in tow who desperately wants to find Thomas but is keeping her motivations concealed. The second is Thomas’ presumed dead brother, Robert (Jeremy Kent Jackson), who was involved in the fatal incident but has cut a deal with the Rockefellers and New York authorities to turn Thomas in, dead or alive, for $100,000, the largest reward in U.S. history (I did the math, and this would be an absurd $3.5 million in 2025 dollars). Robert, scarred and sporting an eyepatch, has 100 men in his posse, and Gunslingers largely turns into a “siege” movie, with Thomas and the town’s outlaw denizens banding together in the local saloon to fend off the invaders and save their own skins.
‘Gunslingers’ Suffers From Its Limited Budget and Scope, and a Few Disastrous Performances

At first, it’s hard to take Gunslingers seriously, as it is very much hamstrung by its small, VOD-friendly budget and scope. The film is technically releasing in select theaters at the same time it premieres digitally, but you wouldn’t guess it from its bare-bones sets and simple yet harsh lighting. And, tonally, the movie starts out rough with Dorff taking things very seriously, Cage hamming it up to 11, and most of the other performances falling somewhere in between. Eventually, though, Gunslingers does kind of find its footing, and, if you squint, you can see the kind of movie it hopes to be. What it’s definitely not is a serious Western, something Cage tried two years back with The Old Way, which was a generic, classic-style Western with a touch of John Wick thrown in that proved to be a total trainwreck. Instead, Gunslingers hopes to be something more lively and fun — a film more on par with director Sam Raimi’s 1995 cult classic, The Quick and the Dead. Like that film, Gunslingers wants to take classic Western tropes and gussy them up with a ragtag bunch of colorful characters. So we’ve got Cage’s “mad genius” Ben, who wears crucifix-shaped glasses, shakes and shimmies through scenes, and hoarsely speaks cornball lines like, “There’s fire in hell, Mary! Hot fire!” And he’s joined by an assortment of mostly charismatic lowlifes looking for redemption who grow on you as the movie goes along. I particularly liked Costas Mandylor, another journeyman actor who’s been around forever, as Jericho, the town’s fearless leader. It’s almost enough to push Gunslingers into “recommended” territory.
But there are a couple of things that ultimately hold it back. One, director Brian Skiba is no Sam Raimi, and, despite a few moderately effective shootouts, there’s just not enough of a sense of style here for the movie to rise above its VOD station. Two — and I’m going to be as nice about this as I can — Gunslingers features a pair of disastrously bad performances that nearly sink the whole endeavor. Look, Boogie Nights is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I think Heather Graham has excelled in projects ranging from Twin Peaks to Austin Powers. But you just cannot drop her into a period-piece Western. Graham’s character and performance come across as so anachronistic and artificial that pretty much every scene she’s in feels like it’s from a completely different — and much worse — movie. I realize her name probably helped get the film funded, but, sadly, she’s doing way more harm than good here. Beyond that, there’s another performance in the film, from a young actress playing Jericho’s daughter, which is somehow even more catastrophic, to the point that I was guessing as I watched that she had to be the daughter of a producer or something. Once the movie ended, I scanned the end credits to try to solve this mystery. Turns out, her last name is Stallone, and, yeah, she’s related. I’ll just leave it at that.
So, ultimately, Gunslingers can’t quite escape feeling like forgettable VOD junk. It does at least try to rise above its standing, and, at times, it comes close to pulling it off. Cage-heads will likely want to check this one off their list, and hardcore Western (or Southern) fanatics may find it worth a watch, as well. But, if you don’t fall firmly into one of those two groups, it’s probably best to steer clear of this outlaw town.
Gunslingers comes to select theaters and digital streaming services on April 11.

Gunslingers

A gonzo Nicolas Cage performance almost (but not quite) powers Gunslingers to “guilty pleasure” status.

Release Date

April 11, 2025

Director

Brian Skiba

Producers

Randall Batinkoff, Jamie R. Thompson

Pros & Cons

Nicolas Cage fans will enjoy the actor once again choosing to deliver a supremely strange performance.
There are moments where ‘Gunslingers’ nearly coalesces into the colorful, fun Western it desperately wants to be.

Performances range from solid to bizarre to outright terrible. It’s fair to say the acting is catastrophically inconsistent.
Director Brian Skiba is unable to give the film the notable sense of style it needs to rise above its low-budget trappings.