The sun hasn’t yet set on the western genre. Sometimes comedic, sometimes fantastical, recent releases like Prime Video’s The English show that the genre still has plenty of horses left in its stable. We’re at the point where it takes a second or two to think of an actor that hasn’t taken up a six-shooter. Among legends like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, we now have Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, and even Jackie Chan taking on the sandy badlands. Who hasn’t been in a western yet? You may not believe it at first: Nicolas Cage.

Despite his prolific career, Nicolas Cage has never starred in his own western. Fortunately, that will change with the upcoming film The Old Way, a western action movie that stars himself and Ryan Kiera Armstrong. It’ll be directed by Brett Donowho and distributed by Saban Films, the latter being responsible for distributing the violent Santa Claus film Fatman.

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Here’s a breakdown of The Old Way’s latest trailer.

A Father-Daughter Revenge Western

We start with a familiar sight: the plains of the old west, sunbeams from a pale sky scattered by the rickety, haphazardly stuck together wood of a rustic fence. A disheveled Colton Briggs (Nicolas Cage) breaks new ground with a spade. We pull back to see why he’s digging a hole – a body wrapped in a linen sheet lies just a few feet away from him. In the foreground, Brooke Briggs (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) speaks to an elderly man as they reminisce about the girl’s mother.

We jump back to the past. A brief glimpse at a mustachioed Colton follows shots of him lovingly embracing his wife just before murdering a man with a blackened six-shooter. She turned him from a “cold-blooded killer to a family man,” alluding to the revenge that’s sure to follow.

Colton hammers in a wooden cross above a makeshift grave just before Brooke reveals that her “momma’s dead now.” In the past, Ruth Briggs (Kerry Knuppe) is seen tending to the laundry before being maliciously attacked by a pack of bandits. Her death, depicted off-screen, is revealed to have spurned the discussion we’ve been following.

Gunfight After Gunfight

     Lionsgate

You don’t see a violent father-daughter movie very often. It’s an unconventional setup shared by the upcoming The Last of Us series. As we’ll see in the rest of the trailer, we’re bound to see both Colton and Brooke distribute their fair share of hot lead.

Colton digs through a lockbox to find the very same six-shooter we saw earlier. Outside, he grits his teeth and demands the names of the men who killed Ruth. We glimpse the golden badge on the unnamed man’s chest, revealing him to be Marshall Jarrett (Nick Searcy). Given Colton’s past and his surviving kin, however, there’s “no room for vengeance.” Colton and Brooke burn down the cabin, a metaphor for the duo abandoning their past life to set fire to the desert wastes. After a brief daytime shootout, Brooke asks her father if she can be taught how to shoot. Colton silently nods. Not a moment later, she’s seen with a repeating rifle, bearing down on an off-screen target.

The trailer continues as the duo of Colton and Brooke apprehend a pair of men in a wooded region. As they attempt to disarm the two men, one of them threatens Brooke with a violent death via shotgun. Colton looks down at his leg, which is currently in a crude splint. Without so much as a word, Brooke stomps on the wounded limb.

Following a fade to black, we get a brief look at the interior typical western saloon. There’s a lack of light inside the structure, and while nighttime alcohol consumption is a prime past-time for many in the old west, the only occupants are Brooke, a bartender in the background – and the villain of the film, James McCallister (Noah Le Gros). Throughout the entirety of the trailer, McCallister has been a persistent presence: a cocky man who’s rarely seen without a smug smile on his face. Brooke is visibly perturbed by him, with the encounter likely occurring after she and Colton separated.

Heading West This January

We get a final affirmation of Briggs’ personality: “If Briggs decides he’s comin’, Colton Briggs is comin’.” This is punctuated by a surprisingly brutal execution by Colton, as he slits a man’s neck open in broad daylight. To conclude the trailer, we get a title drop from McCallister before an action montage plays out: horses trod along grassy plains, guns are locked and loaded, bodies hit the dirt, and one final draw from Colton leads directly into the film’s title card.

The Old Way joins this Autumn’s run of historical dramas and other period pieces, though it takes a decidedly more action-oriented approach. The film is currently set to release theatrically on January 6th, 2023, with a video-on-demand release on January 13th, 2023.