David Lowery | Scott's Film Reviews-1,476 Reviews posted!!! COMING SOON-MY TOP 250 FILMS!!

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.

A Ghost Story-2017

Director David Lowery

Starring Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara

Scott’s Review #764

Reviewed May 27, 2018

Grade: A-

It’s marvelous to support independent film. I get most of my selections via the annual Independent Spirit Award nominations, which are announced every November.

Rich, creative films that ordinarily would be overlooked are recognized and sometimes treasured instead of forgotten entirely.

A Ghost Story (2017) is a small film fortunate to land big-name stars, undoubtedly increasing its audience—I am unsure if this film ever played in theaters anywhere.

Nonetheless, the film is a thought-provoking experience that left me perplexed and fascinated but with the knowledge that I had seen something worthwhile. I may not have completely understood it, but I also adored it.

Writer and director David Lowery must be good with Hollywood A-listers Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, who star in A Ghost Story. The pair also appeared in Lowery’s first film, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013), which received critical acclaim.

Somewhere outside of Dallas, Texas, a young married couple known as “C” (Affleck) and “M” (Mara) moves into a small house. “C” is a musician with an unusual fondness for the tiny house the couple rents.

While “M” desires to leave the house, “C” wishes to stay, somehow drawn to it. After “C” is tragically killed in a car accident, his spirit returns, unable to let go of either his wife or his home, eventually stuck in time to watch generations come and go.

A Ghost Story is a cerebral experience as we watch the events from the perspective of “C.” Adding an eerie quality is that “C” is a ghost- shrouded in a plain white bed sheet with dark circles for the eyes. While “C” does not speak, we experience his perceptions and feelings through what he sees.

At first, following “M” around as she mourns his loss, eventually, she moves on and “C” is forced to watch others live in the house. Pitifully, he awaits the return of “M” as hundreds of years go by.

Lowery is good at creating an ominous and haunting tone, mainly through his classical musical score. The film is wonderfully original.

The audience feels the loss and loneliness of both “C” and “M,” but there is a scary quality, too—not in the horror genre way, but rather, we do not know what will happen next. When “M” brings a man home, “C” is furious, knocking books to the ground and turning the lights on and off.

Later, a new family is terrorized when an unhappy “C” breaks all their dishes in a rage.

A scene that gave me the creeps is when “C,” in spirit form, gazes out the window of his house and notices another ghost looking out the window next door. This ghost looks exactly like him, except it is female- we know this because her sheet has a flower pattern.

They can communicate without speaking, and “C” learns that she has been waiting for someone to come home to her, but it’s been so long that she can’t remember who it is. This scene is sad and filled with despondency.

A forewarning is that the pacing of the film is very slow—perhaps too slow for most. After “M’s” landlord brings her a pie, we watch her devour it in a very long five-minute scene, after which she vomits the contents up.

Despite its length, this scene is powerful and important, as the entire time, we view her depression and longing for “C” to return, absorbing some little comfort from the pie.

A Ghost Story reaches its creative climax towards the end as the film comes full circle, and we begin to understand the circumstances. A dynamic sequence of the passage of time occurs, showing the demolition of the house and the development of a thriving city over time. Depressed and desolate, “C” jumps off of a high rise.

However, the final scene mystified me, and I was unable to completely make A Ghost Story (2017) add up (was there a second ghost or a rebirth of “C”?), but that is also part of the film’s intrigue.

Regardless, the film is a worthy watch if only for a cerebral story that makes one think. Its central themes of loneliness and loss are depressing but also fascinating concerning the good story that Lowery creates.

Independent Spirit Award Nominations: John Cassavetes Award