Joyous role could be Redford’s swan song
The Old Man & the Gun (out of 4) Starring Robert Redford, Sissy Spacek, Casey Affleck, Danny Glover and Tom Waits. Written and directed by David Lowery. Opens Friday at the Varsity and Scotiabank theatres. 93 minutes. PG
“This Story is Mostly True,” goes the tag line for The Old
Man & the Gun, the movie that may or may not be Robert Redford’s swan song as an actor.
The truth of it hardly matters just as Redford’s stated plan to retire, which he’s recently walked back, should be taken with the largest grain of salt.
What does matter is Redford’s performance as Forrest Tucker, a career bank robber known as much for his charm as his bravado in a series of heists he pulled across the American Southwest.
Redford thoroughly enjoys himself in a role that’s perfect for his age (82) and personality. Smiling throughout, even while fleeing cops, he makes the movie seem like a spiritual sequel to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, if Sundance had survived his Bolivian misadventure and time-travelled to the early 1980s — although in this case his gun is just for show.
Writer/director David Lowery, a minimalist who made a convincing phantom out of a man in a sheet for A Ghost Story, lovingly adapts an admiring 2003 New Yorker article about Tucker’s life and exploits. Lowery is mainly interested in Tucker’s sunset years, limiting to a brief montage the most cinematic part of the outlaw’s tale, his multiple prison escapes.
These include a daring 1979 bust out of San Quentin Prison with two fellow prisoners in a handmade kayak they cheekily called “Rub-a-Dub-Dub.”
Redford’s Tucker is the most gentlemanly of rogues, who seems to spend more time on his look — natty fedora and three-piece suit, fake moustache, fake hearing aid (actually a police radio monitor) — than he does on planning his capers.
But Tucker has robbed so many banks he doesn’t need to do much advanced planning. He mostly just strolls in, shows a teller or manager his gun, and politely asks for only as much cash as he can easily walk out with.
He’s not in it for the money, just the thrills.
He then strolls outside to a nearby “hot” car, later switching to a “cool” car to evade pursuers.
Often he works solo; other times he’s assisted by his criminal associates Teddy (Danny Glover) and Waller (Tom Waits), who seem more like good-luck charms than necessary accomplices.
Tucker never seems to break a sweat; he’s as easygoing as the soft jazz and folksy ballads on the soundtrack. He’s clearly unconcerned about the police, who don’t seem all that inclined to round up members of his gang. The press call Tucker’s crew “the Over-the-Hill Gang,” which would have made a good late-career name for Butch Cassidy’s “Hole-in-the-Wall Gang.”
The only lawman who really seems to want to stop Tucker is John Hunt (Casey Affleck), a Texas police detective who witnessed one of his robberies and now seeks him out of a combination of professional duty, curiosity and respect. He’s in no hurry, either, almost as if he’s reluctant to have the chase end.
In the most muted of meetcutes, Tucker makes the acquaintance of a widowed rancher named Jewel (Sissy Spacek, a gentle presence). He pretends to offer assistance to her broken-down truck on the highway. When Tucker later reveals to Jewel that he’s a bank robber, he does so in such a matter-of-fact manner, she can’t believe him — and by then, she’s fallen for him and his twinkling blue eyes.
Theirs is a very chaste love story, just as The Old Man & the Gun is the most laid-back of crime stories. This is not the movie to see if you crave action or the mechanics of a caper movies.
It’s also not the picture to see if you object to the romanticizing of crime.
Do see it, though, if you want to experience Redford in one of his most joyous roles, whether or not it proves to be his farewell from the big screen.
Redford thoroughly enjoys himself in a role that’s perfect for his age (82) and personality.