The Old Man & the Gun-2018
Director David Lowery
Starring Robert Redford, Sissy Spacek
Scott’s Review #945
Reviewed October 11, 2019
Grade: B
Quiet films centered on older characters are not the norm in youth-obsessed Hollywood, where profits are always in fashion.
The Old Man & the Gun (2018) spins a tale offering adventure and a good old-fashioned love story, with appealing stars. The film is slow-moving and not groundbreaking, but it possesses a fine veneer and a snug plot that gives viewers a fuzzy feeling of watching something wholesome.
The script is loosely based on David Grann’s 2003 article “The Old Man and the Gun”, which was later collected in Grann’s 2010 book The Devil and Sherlock Holmes.
Career criminal Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford) is wanted for his daring escape from San Quentin State Prison in 1979. The current period is 1981.
Addicted to petty bank robberies for relatively small dollar amounts because he is addicted to the rush. A charmer, he is unassuming and unsuspecting. As he flees the scene of a recent heist, he meets a kind widowed woman named Jewel (Sissy Spacek), whose truck has broken down.
The pair have lunch at a diner and quickly bond.
Forrest is in cahoots with two other bank robbers as the trio makes their way across the southwest United States, garnering a reputation. Detective John Hunt (Casey Affleck), a Dallas detective, is tasked with finding and arresting Tucker until the FBI takes the case away.
Hunt cannot give up the search, and the duo embarks on a cat-and-mouse chase across the area, sometimes crossing paths in the local diner.
Where The Old Man & the Gun succeeds is any scene featuring Forrest and Jewel together. Their chemistry is radiant during calm scenes of the couple eating pie and sipping coffee at the diner, simply getting to know each other organically.
During their first encounter, Forrest slips her a note, adding mystery to their bond. It is unclear whether he reveals his shady career to her, but it is alluded that he has confessed something that she is not sure she believes.
Redford carries the film as if he were still a leading man from his 1970s and 1980s blockbuster days, which is a testament to his Hollywood staying power.
With his charismatic smile and still dashing good looks, it is little wonder that the bank tellers he holds up describe him as friendly and polite, easily wooing the folks into his good graces.
A crowning achievement for the actor, he narrowly missed an Academy Award nomination but did score a Golden Globe nod.
The film suffers from predictability during the final act, when one of his accomplices turns him in to the police, and a chase ensues between Forrest and Hunt.
This is not the film’s best part, and it feels like dozens of other crime dramas. Affleck looks to be in a role he didn’t particularly enjoy; at least, that is how it seems to me watching the film.
The actor is an Oscar winner playing cops and robbers and second fiddle to Redford. Can you blame him for looking glum?
Speaking of misses, Hunt is in an interracial relationship with Maureen, a beautiful black woman who has a mixed-race daughter. Rural Texas in 1981 must have posed racial issues for the family, but this is never mentioned. Maureen and her daughter also look straight out of 2019 with fashionable hairstyles and clothes.
The relationship is progressive, a plus, but it is written unrealistically.
Although rumored to be retiring from the film industry (we’ll see if that happens), Robert Redford gives a terrific turn as a man who reflects upon his life and treats the audience to the same effect.
Spacek is a delicious role and a crowning achievement for a great career and is a perfect cast and a treasure to have along for the ride, celebrating two fantastic careers.
The Old Man & the Gun (2018) is a touching, romantic bank heist film with more positives than negatives.
