It could stand more drama, but middling was never so hot
Stand Up Guys a joy to watch
Sometimes a movie’s biggest pleasures are the simple ones. There are no real surprises and not a lot of drama in Stand Up Guys, but since the actors not delivering the goods are septuagenarians Christopher Walken, Al Pacino and Alan Arkin, you’re in for a show nonetheless.
Whether shooting bad guys or just the breeze, they’re a joy to watch. They’re also part of a recent, welcome trend in old-folks cinema. (See Quartet, A Late Quartet, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and, if you must, The Expendables 2.)
The picture opens with Pacino being released from jail after 28 years. Walken picks him up at the prison gates in a big blue Buick that looks like it’s been on the road since before he went in. There’s a Blues Brothers feel to their reunion, helped by an R&B soundtrack from the likes of Baby Huey, Gary Clark Jr., Wayne Cochran, Muddy Waters and more.
Pacino’s jailbird is named Val. Walken is Doc. They used to work for a crime boss named Claphands, played by a wizened Mark Margolis. Now that Val has served his time, Claphands would like him killed. Doc is to be the reluctant assassin.
But that can wait at least until the dawn. In a true guys-night-out fashion (granted, the guys are usually at least a few decades younger than these guys) Doc and Val hit the town, liberate their buddy Hirsch (Arkin) from a nursing home, steal a sports car — from a gang so evil, says Walken, “they’ll take out your kidneys and not even sell them” — and go on a bender.
There are differences, of course. The rowdies from The Hangover, Project X or the upcoming 21 & Over might break into a drugstore, but they’re unlikely to grab pills for hypertension and cataracts. (Actually, Doc grabs them; Val snorts them.)
Then there are the similarities. As with so many other male-pattern bonding films, the women they come across are uniformly beautiful and preternaturally willing.
Lovely Lisa (Courtney Galiano) agrees to a slow dance with Pacino in a bar; brothel madam Wendy (Lucy Punch) and Russian prostitute Oxana (Katheryn Winnick) fall for Hirsch after a three-way; waitress Alex (Addison Timlin) is right out of a ’50s diner; and so on. In a weird bit of why-not casting, former ER cast member Julianna Margulies steps back into scrubs to play nurse Nina.
The last-night-of-the-condemned-man movie has been done before, but the ones I’ve seen, by Canadians (Real Time), Australians (Cactus), the French (Man on the Train) and the Japanese (Adrift in Tokyo) are uniformly good.
Stand Up Guys continues the trend, with the added pleasure of seasoned veterans who still use payphones and care about the cut of their suits. It may be unexceptional, but middling never looked so good.