Redford maintains mystery to the end
The Old Man & the Gun Rated: PG-13 for brief strong language. Running time: 93 minutes. ★★★ out of 4
There’s a mystery about Robert Redford, and if “The Old Man & the Gun” turns out, as planned, to be his final movie as an actor, then he will have left the scene without ever fully revealing himself. But then, the best movie stars never give it all away.
Still, if there is a key to Redford, it has always been this: He isn’t what he looks like. That is, he looks cheerful, uncomplicated and easygoing — he looks like a certain type of California guy — but he’s not that at all. He’s not the opposite of that, either. He’s just something else.
In his very early days, in television, this disconnect between the inward and outward Redford caused him to be cast as a villain. But he wasn’t a villain. He was rather the kind of hero that didn’t show up too often in the early 1960s, the kind who’s good and right but weirdly unreassuring. So perhaps “The Old Man & the Gun” is the ideal way for Redford to go out, as a charming, likable geezer who robs banks, but for his own reasons, which he either can’t or won’t explain.
The movie is based on the story of Forrest Tucker — no, not the guy who played Sgt. O’Rourke on “F Troop,” but a bank robber who spent a lot of time in prison, and a lot of time out of prison (having escaped).
It’s hard to imagine anyone in this role but Redford. Without him, there would be little here worth seeing. The story is rather like a little anecdote that begins, “There was this guy,” with the possible reply looming: “Yeah, and so what?” But with Redford there, the movie takes on dimension, as the story of a man with a calling to be free and to live a life at a certain pitch of excitement. The real Tucker may have just been someone who lacked imagination, who didn’t know anything
but crime, but Redford makes him into someone plugged into some secret about the meaning of life.
As Tucker, Redford acts like his usual screen self: breezy, edgy, hidden. Wildly self-confident. Self-willed. Stubborn. But with a conscience and the suggestion of some deep current of feeling that he’s not exactly showing. The movie casts Tucker as a rugged individualist, a man with a spirit too big to be contained, not by convention nor prison walls. Making us believe such a thing is not an easy sell, but then, we don’t have to believe it.
We just have to believe that this time Robert Redford is robbing banks. We have to recognize that he used to be 40, and now he’s 82; that he’s still the same, but he’s different. And that we really need to pay attention, because this is probably the last film of one of the greatest actors who ever stepped in front of a camera.