Gunslingers, directed by Brian Skiba, seems like an extended action sequence, as apart from the stylized Western-style gunfights, the film does not have much to offer. The problem I had with this film was that the audience was given little to no information about the motives and past lives of the various characters. So for 103 minutes, I felt like I was watching a bunch of people, about whom we never came to know anything, trying to get the better of each other. I didn’t understand why the narrative fastidiously abstained from delving into the lives of the characters and giving us any context about any of them. Also, I failed to understand what Nicolas Cage was trying to do in the film and what difference it would have made had his character not been there. There is a thin line between what could be funny and what just seems like absurdity. Gunslingers seemed to learn more towards the latter. That said, the premise of all the wanted criminals faking their deaths and living in a town called Redemption did have a lot of potential, but the filmmaker was never truly able to harness that. So let’s try to make sense of the events shown in the film and find out what the characters were up to.
Spoiler Alert
Why was Thomas Keller on the run?
At the beginning of the film, we saw a fight sequence where there was a deadly clash between two parties in New York. The most frustrating thing about Gunslingers was that it never went into the details of that clash, and we were left to fill in the blanks and work out for ourselves what exactly transpired between the two groups. So what I was able to decipher from the limited information we were given was that two brothers, Robert and Thomas Keller, went West to make some sort of deal with a mafia boss in New York. Though we don’t know what that meeting was about, evidently it didn’t go as per the plans of the Keller brothers. Thomas somehow managed to escape from there and reach a town called Redemption, located in Kentucky. Robert, on the other hand, was almost burned to death and wasn’t so lucky as to make an escape. Robert knew that if he didn’t offer a good deal to his nemesis, he would not be left alive. So Robert told the mafia boss that he would find his brother and bring him back to New York, even if it came at the cost of putting his own life in jeopardy. It was the early 1900s, and a bounty of hundreds of thousands was unheard of before. Thomas Keller came to be known as the man who had the highest bounty on his head in the history of America.
Thomas roamed in the wilderness, often encountering savage bounty hunters who just wanted to capture him and take him to New York to claim the reward. But Thomas survived somehow, and he managed to reach Redemption, where he knew he could settle down for the rest of his life. The most fascinating aspect of the film was the fact that the residents of the town were all wanted criminals with huge bounties on their heads. They were able to survive by faking their own deaths and, after that, laying as low as they could. The extent to which they went to make sure that people bought their lie was as surprising as it could get. They had fake graves with nothing but dead coyotes inside them, and they even clicked photographs of people pretending to be dead to make sure that nobody had any suspicions about them, creating a false narrative. But it was just a matter of time before somebody found out about it and came looking for the fugitives hiding in Redemption.
What grudge did Robert hold against Thomas?
Robert came to Redemption as his gang members had figured out that there were no human skeletons in the graves buried in the town. Robert met Jericho face to face in the latter’s club, and he told him that if he didn’t want his men to die, he should just tell him where Thomas was hiding. Another thing that had happened just before Robert arrived at Redemption was that a woman had come there looking for Thomas. That woman had a kid named Grace with her, and by the looks of it, she was a bit scared of what was about to come. She asked Bella, the barmaid, about Thomas, and then asked her if she could get a room to stay the night. That woman was Robert’s wife, Val, and she had arrived in the town to ask Thomas about what the future held. So basically, Val and Robert had left New York together, but then somehow, taking her chances, Val was able to ditch her husband and come to the town of the dead. At that moment in Gunslingers, it was uncertain why she took that risk, but eventually we realized that she did so because she was in love with her brother-in-law. Robert knew that, which is why he was even more frustrated and eager to settle scores with his elder brother. The news of Robert arriving in Redemption reached Thomas, who decided to come out of hiding and face his younger brother head-on. The mafia boss in New York had threatened Robert that if he wanted to stay alive, he’d have to find his brother and bring him back to him. Robert knew that he would have to take Thomas back with him at any cost. Robert blamed Thomas for everything that had happened. He felt that his brother left him in danger and didn’t care if he lived or died. But apart from that fact, there was another reason why Robert felt this kind of animosity towards his brother. Val and Thomas’ love story was no secret to the world, but what the latter didn’t know was that Grace was his child.
Thomas came, and he had a chat with Jericho and his entire gang. He told them very bluntly that they shouldn’t put their lives at risk. Jericho and his men might have been wanted fugitives, but they too lived by their code. When they had arrived in town, they had promised to stand by each other, and so this time too they didn’t give themselves the option of backing out. So Jericho’s men fought with all their might, and in the end, they were able to overpower Robert’s men. At the end, Robert and Thomas came face to face, and the former told his elder brother about him being the biological father of Val’s child. Before Robert could do any more harm, Thomas swiftly pulled out his gun and killed Robert. It was probably the most difficult thing a brother could ever do for his survival. I believe Thomas would have never killed his brother had he not threatened to kill Grace. Thomas knew that Robert’s vengefulness had made him a savage, and he was actually capable of killing the little girl. Also, he knew that there was no empathy left inside Robert, and though his wounds had healed, the scars reminded him of what happened in the past.
What Happened In The Mid-Credits Scene?
There were two major highlights of the gunfight that happened between Jericho’s gang and Robert’s men. Firstly, there was a man named Ben (Nicolas Cage), who seemed to be suffering from some kind of mental disorder and who refused to pick up a gun in the entire fight. It was only in the climax that Ben loaded his Colt 1873 and shot at the enemies like there was no tomorrow. Another major event was when one of Jericho’s men betrayed the trust of his gang and showed Robert’s gang members how to breach the fortress. That man was probably a mole whose greed made him break the pact and go against Thomas and Jericho. In the mid-credit scene, we saw that same traitor enjoying an opulent lifestyle after he claimed the reward money that was on Thomas’ head and got rich. That traitor had probably made the New York mafia boss believe that Thomas Keller was dead, but what he did not know was that by betraying the trust of his fellow gang members, he had signed his own doom. Jericho’s men killed the traitor and finally settled the scores. As for Thomas and Val, I believe they had a happy ending, and they were pretty content with the world assuming that they no longer existed.
