Classy Redford bows out in real style
THE OLD MAN & THE GUN
(Cert 12, 93mins)
ROBERT Redford says this will be his final film as an actor and the 82-year-old bows out in style in this gentle true-life crime caper. Director David Lowery’s drama is based on 2003 New Yorker magazine article about Forrest Tucker, a career criminal who broke out of San Quentin prison at the age of 70 and went on a bank robbing spree.
The story is set in 1981 but there’s something of the gentleman highwayman about Tucker. He may or may not have a pistol in his pocket but his main weapons are a silver tongue, a warm voice and that famous pair of twinkly baby blues. The old rogue charms his victims into filling his bag with banknotes.
Lowery, who worked with Redford on his lovely remake of Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, treats the veteran with the respect he deserves. This a rare crime movie that isn’t powered by suspense and shoot-outs. Instead, it’s the performances that make this leisurely drama tick.
Redford is one of those old-fashioned actors who keep their cards close to their chest. If Tucker feels guilty about his crimes and if his pulse races at the sight of a cop car, he’s not the type to let on.
While making his escape from the film’s opening robbery, he calmly pulls over to the side of the freeway to help an elderly damsel in distress. Recently widowed Jewel (Sissy Spacek) has broken down. She thinks this nattily attired old gentleman is her knight in shining armour. We know otherwise.
What looks like a hearing aid is actually attached to a police scanner. And the last thing the cops are looking for is a man helping an old lady fix her car.
It turns out Tucker knows nothing about engines so he gives her a lift to a diner where they drink coffee and share a slice of pie. When he tells her he’s a bank robber, Jewel thinks it is just part of his patter. But the chemistry between the two veterans begins to spark and Tucker keeps popping in on Jewel as his crime spree crosses state borders.
When Casey Affleck’s detective John Hunt joins the dots, the papers dub him and his elderly accomplices (Tom Waits and Danny Glover) the “Over The Hill Gang”.
Hunt tracks down Tucker’s daughter (Elisabeth Moss) who hasn’t seen him for years and is more than happy to give him up, giving us a rare glimpse of the man beneath the veneer of charm.
Towards the end, Lowery reveals the extent of Tucker’s long criminal career with a sequence that recycles footage from Redford’s earlier films. It works beautifully here even if it does feel a little like an awards ceremony montage.
Perhaps someone will find a use for it in February?
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
★★★★
(Cert 15, 112mins)
RAPPER-turned-director Boots Riley’s unclassifiable debut film takes us to an alternate-reality version of Oakland, California where a young black man called Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) has taken a soul-crushing job in telesales. In the next cubicle is an old hand played by Lethal Weapon’s Danny Glover (who is once again “too old for this s***”). He offers some killer advice: “Use your white voice.”
From this point onwards Cassius’ voice is dubbed by a white actor and his sales soar. And when his co-workers go on strike, Cassius is invited into a golden lift to join the “power sellers” selling slave labour to evil multinationals.
He takes his pay cheque, falls in with Armie Hammer’s insane billionaire and falls out with his artist girlfriend (Tessa Thompson).
Before Cassius goes even further off the rails in the final act, he is reeled into a bizarre reality TV show, a surreal art gallery opening
and a painful rap performance. Not all of it works but Riley keeps digging until he strikes comedy gold. Some scenes are funny, clever and deeply unsettling at the same time.
I can’t wait to see what he comes up with for an encore.
RETURN OF THE HERO
★★★
(Cert 12A, 88mins)
FANS of gentle Gallic comedy should love this French farce set during the Napoleonic Wars.
The film begins in 1809 as the rakish Captain Neuville (The Artist star Jean Dujardin) is called to the Austrian front seconds after proposing to naive aristocrat Pauline (Noémie Merlant). When his failure to respond to her love letters leaves the poor flower heartbroken, her smart elder sister Elisabeth (Mélanie Laurent) decides to fake a series of replies.
As the years go by, Elisabeth’s increasingly unlikely tales make Neuville a celebrity in his rural town. But when the locals build a statue of their heroic captain, Elisabeth decides she has gone too far and decides to kill off her creation. In his final letter, the brave patriot is facing certain death and urges Pauline to marry again.
Elisabeth’s dastardly plan hits a snag when he returns to the town in 1812 as a penniless deserter desperate to cash in on his heroic reputation.
As she can’t expose him without revealing her own lies, a cat-and-mouse game develops between the two con artists.
Perhaps some of the jokes are better suited to a French audience (the sexual politics aren’t very #MeToo) but the chemistry between Dujardin and Laurent keeps this amiable farce ticking over.
BIRD BOX ★★★ (Cert 15, 124mins)
IN April’s In A Quiet Place, we watched in terror as a pregnant Emily Blunt tiptoed around a farm to avoid ravenous blind monsters with super-sharp hearing. Now, a pregnant Sandra Bullock is wearing a blindfold to avoid invisible creatures inducing visions that make people suicidal.
Sadly, I didn’t get in much of a flap watching Susanne Bier’s Netflix-produced horror which has a brief theatrical release on Thursday ahead of its homestreaming debut on December 21. The Danish director won the 2011 Foreign Language Oscar for her drama In A Better World but she can’t milk enough scares out of novelist Josh Malerman’s premise.
After most of humanity has committed suicide, Bullock’s Malorie is holed up in a suburban home with a diverse group of survivors played by John Malkovich, Trevante Rhodes, Sarah Paulson, Jacki Weaver and Lil Rel Howery.
As this mismatched group struggle to feed and protect themselves, Bier keeps cutting to future scenes of Malorie and two children trying to navigate a boat down a river. As they are all wearing blindfolds, this is a lot trickier than it sounds.
Bullock is excellent and there are a couple of tense moments but horror fans will feel short-changed in terms of shocks and chills.