The Old Man & the Gun
Cert: 12A; Now showing
With a customary double-take and a handsome twinkle in the eye, Robert Redford, the Sundance Kid himself, takes a bow in this deeply nostalgic love letter to old-school values and ageing gracefully. Writer-director David Lowery (A Ghost Story, Pete’s Dragon) is charged with helming the film icon’s supposed final screen outing, and understands that there is no point trying to separate the 82-year-old from the character he’s essaying.
Redford plays Forrest Tucker, a serial bank robber and jail-breaker who was part of a small crew of grey-flecked scoundrels dubbed by the media at that time as the Over-The-Hill Gang (here completed by Danny Glover and Tom Waits). Renowned for his awfully nice manners with the tellers he holds at gun point, Tucker and his team also love the thrill it brings as they shuffle through the winter of their lives, something that hasn’t escaped the detective and family man (Casey Affleck) pursuing them.
Central to Forrest’s arc is Jewel (Sissy Spacek), whom he comes to the roadside assistance of immediately after a bank robbery, in order to shake off the cops. Over that great American tradition of coffee and pie in a diner booth, romance blooms between the seasoned birds.
You’d need to be made of stern stuff to resist the aura of vintage cool that surrounds this affectionate, assured 90 minutes. Not a note of Lowery’s film feels laboured, from the effortless appeal of the ensemble cast to Daniel Hart’s mellow jazz score. While set in 1981, grainy film stock and bold intertitles knowingly nod to Redford’s Butch Cassidy.../The Sting crime-drama heyday a decade previously.
Hollywood rarely does curtain calls this elegant.