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JP Devine Movie Review: 'The Old Man and the Gun'


Heâ€™s back, Jeremiah Johnson, Sundance Kid, Johnny Hooker from â€œThe Sting,â€ and the gorgeous movie star Hubbell Gardiner in â€œThe Way We Were.â€

Yes, Robert Redford is back, perhaps for the last time in â€œThe Old Man and the Gun,â€ where he plays Forrest Tucker, a senior citizen habitual bank robber, 17-time prison escapee and counting, known as the â€œGentleman Thief,â€ for his courtly manner when taking the cash.

Robert Redford, left, and Sissy Spacek in "The Old Man and the Gun."

Movie info

â€œThe Old Man and the Gunâ€

Comedy, crime, drama


Length: 103 minutes

MPAA rating: PG-13 for brief strong language

Director: David Lowery

Writers: David Lowery, David Grann

Stars: Robert Redford, Casey Affleck, Sissy Spacek

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â€œHe was so kind and sweet,â€ the cashiers say.

I pause here for a moment to say Iâ€™ve always thought of Redford as being really, really good at being a movie star, with those blue, twinkling eyes and that hesitant smile trying to form at the corners of his mouth. The camera loves it, the studios love it, women especially love it. Itâ€™s an old Hollywood story.

But I suspect that sometimes the actor deep down in his soul â€" that graduate of New Yorkâ€™s famed American Academy of Dramatic Arts that he always wanted to be if only he had been born with DeNiroâ€™s face â€" escapes and leaks out.

In David Loweryâ€™s â€œThe Old Man and the Gunâ€ this happens several times and itâ€™s nice to watch.

Here, he too often uses old movie star tricks, and becomes once again Johnny Hooker from â€œThe Stingâ€ who is back with a new hat and a new bag of tricks. Still, there is a beautiful moment in one scene with the impossibly magnificent Sissy Spacek sitting across from him in a small town cafe booth.

Lowery (â€Ainâ€™t Them Bodies Saintsâ€) gets his cinematographer Joe Anderson to slide his camera in for a series of closeups.

Sissy, as â€œJewel,â€ a down on her luck widow who owns a ranch and pretty horses, and Redford as â€œForrest,â€ who is six miles ahead of the law after his last bank heist, had just met on the highway where her deceased husbandâ€™s old truck broke down. Forrest, ever the aging flirt, and needing the cover her presence will give him, provides her a ride into town and into this cafe.

In this booth, t he best stuff in the movie happens. In the short scene, that antique serum called chemistry flows across the formica table top.

The camera moves from Sissyâ€™s eyes, dappled with dangling locks of unkempt hair, to Redfordâ€™s weathered, lined face and flirting blue eyes.

This is not a scene about getting each other into bed, theyâ€™re both a bit past that now, and itâ€™s better than that.

Itâ€™s about watching the ancient memories of two once-upon-a-timers, floating back out of the past, sharing a soda with two straws, holding hands in the movie, walking slowly home in the moonlight. Weâ€™ve all been on that walk. Weâ€™ve all seen that moonlight.

Before our eyes, Forrest and Jewel become young again, we can see them drawing from one another the taste and smell of lost moments, times gone by that were fun, romantic. It is as though they just bumped into one another on the street, some 50 years later. There are several scenes between the two of them to fo llow, but none as magical as this. It is, as John Huston once wrote, â€œthe stuff dreams are made of.â€

In this sense, â€œThe Old Man and the Gunâ€ is a sort of Valentine signed and delivered by two old movie pros.

The rest of the film is a nice compilation of cops and robbers, chase and catch. The film is tainted by the impossibly bad Casey Affleck, who is here as Detective John Hunt, a small-time Texas cop who thinks speaking in low, mumbling, inaudible gurgles is â€œmethod acting.â€

Itâ€™s lifted and shined up by the irrepressible Danny Glover and the legendary Tom Waits as Teddy and Waller, two end-of-the-road colleagues sadly given little to do. But this is a true story and their contribution is required.

â€œThe Old Man and the Gunâ€ is a great, true story put in a small package.

Writer-Director Lowry (â€Ghost Storyâ€) does a nice job putting all the pieces together and deserves an Oscar simply for that scene in the coffee house booth. Donâ€™t miss it. Itâ€™s pure gold, a classic.

J.P. Devine, of Waterville, is a former stage and film actor.

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