Review: The Old Man & the Gun

Even if The Old Man & the Gun was not truly Robert Redford's purported swan song, it would still serve as a loving showcase for the 82-year-old screen legend's decades-long career, which includes classics like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Way We Were, All the President's Men, Three Days of the Condor, The Candidate, and Out of Africa. Indeed, much of writer-director David Lowery's fifth film functions as a medley of greatest hits, presenting Redford as a romantic lead, charming anti-hero, and adventurous outlaw. It also serves as somewhat of a counterpoint to Clint Eastwood's The Mule - both films are based on true stories and feature men still vital past what society deems their prime, though Eastwood's film is more a mournful looking back whilst Lowery's very much celebrates the here and now and what is yet to come.

Redford portrays Forrest Tucker, a real-life bank robber who, by his own accounting, escaped from prison "18 times successfully and 12 times unsuccessfully" over the course of a long career that ended in 1981 when, at the age of 76, he was arrested for a series of small-time heists. Lowery presents the various prison breaks, including his audacious escape from San Quentin, in a delightful montage that seems more in the wheelhouse of Wes Anderson than from the man more inclined to direct sobersided efforts like Ain't Them Bodies Saints and A Ghost Story. Tucker was perhaps the most gentlemanly bank robber one could ever hope to meet, the sort who would stroll into a bank, ask for the bank manager, show him a pistol (which was never loaded), and then steal whatever cash was in the tellers' tills with the help of his accomplices, fellow senior citizens Teddy (Danny Glover) and Waller (Tom Waits).

He's also the type who would pause in the midst of a getaway to help a pretty lady named Jewel (Sissy Spacek), whose truck has broken down. He takes her out for coffee at a nearby diner. She asks what he does, he says he's in sales, then says he just made that up. If she knew what he really did, she might not want to go out with him. He tells her anyway because he trusts her, she laughs, doesn't quite believe that she's flirting with a bank robber. Lowery, as he demonstrated with Rooney Mara's four-minute pie-eating scene in A Ghost Story, is not afraid to pause the narrative and luxuriate in a moment and what a moment that is between Redford and Spacek, who create a chemistry that enfolds viewers in its ease and warmth and obvious pleasure in each other's company. The entirety of The Old Man & the Gun could have been comprised of this one scene, so beautifully pitched is it in execution and performance. It's pure magic, plain and simple.

It's no surprise that their romance is doomed from the start, especially since Texas lawman John Hunt (Casey Affleck) is determined to catch Tucker, particularly after the so-called Over the Hill Gang manages to pull off a job right under his nose. In Tucker, Hunt finds a purpose - as his own young daughter wisely notes, "If you caught him, you wouldn't get to chase him anymore." - and the film depicts their cat-and-mouse game as one between friendly foes. Much like the film, neither are in any hurry to get to the destination for they're enjoying the journey too much. The Old Man & the Gun is possessed of a buoyancy and rollicking lightheartedness and Seventies vibe that recalls, equals, and arguably surpasses, Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight and Ocean's Eleven.

There are actors and there are stars and Redford has been and is both. Redford has always been a deceptively casual actor and certainly his golden boy aura has tended to disguise the depths of his talents, but he has always had that ineffable quality that classic Hollywood stars used to have. It's not only the handsomeness, charisma, or sheer force or personality, but rather that certain something that can only be captured by the camera. As with most stars, Redford does a lot with a little, making it all look so easygoing and effortless and proving that they definitely don't make them like they used to.

The Old Man and the Gun

Directed by: David Lowery

Written by: David Lowery; based on the 2003 New Yorker article "The Old Man and the Gun" by David Grann

Starring: Robert Redford, Sissy Spacek, Casey Affleck, Danny Glover, Tom Waits, Tika Sumpter, Ari Elizabeth Johnson, John David Washington, Keith Carradine, Elisabeth Moss, Isiah Whitlock Jr.