Here’s looking at you, Kid

Robert Redford plays an aged bad boy wrestling with dreams of a new life

DAVID Lowery’s comedy drama starts in a style to which you will soon become delightfully accustomed. “This story, also, is mostly true,” is the wry pledge on screen. In gently mocking the endless trail of stories drawn from reality, The Old Man & The Gun is confidently setting up its stall. We know you’ve heard some yarns, says the film with a twinkle in its eye, but this is a doozie. It certainly is.

Indeed, perhaps the only thing wrong with the picture is that it arrives tinged with melancholy. The film’s leading man, Robert Redford, has said this will be his last outing as an actor. The Sundance Kid is now, brace yourselves, 82 years old, and feels it is time to go behind the camera and stay there. Having never won a best actor Oscar – he has one for directing Ordinary People and an honorary award – this could be his last chance. So no pressure, Academy.

It is Texas, 1981, and a smartly dressed gent of a certain age is leaving a bank, having just made a satisfactory transaction. He has asked the teller to hand over the money in the till, they have done so and not a shot has been fired. As he drives along, all the while listening to the police radio, he sees a woman with car trouble and stops to help. Is he being genuinely kind or does he simply want to hide his head in a car bonnet while police cars fly past? It is the first of many times we will wonder about “Bob’s” motives.

His chivalry merits a coffee with Jewel (Sissy Spacek), and conversation turns to what he does for a living. I’m a bank robber, he teases, and to prove it talks her through how he would rob the diner they are in, winding up the story by saying he is just pulling her leg. With the light on his face, Redford looks every minute of his age, but what a charmer.

Across town, detective John Hunt (Casey Affleck) is being forced to celebrate his 40th birthday. Married with two children, Hunt is worried his career is going nowhere. It hasn’t helped that he was in a bank that was being robbed by Bob and did not notice a thing. His pride hurt, Hunt resolves to