Veteran actors 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.

The picture opens with Pacino being released from jail after 28 years. Walken picks him up in a big blue Buick that looks like it’s been on the road since before he went in.

Pacino’s jailbird is named Val. Walken is Doc. (No full names, please; we’re bad guys.) They used to work for a crime boss named Claphands, played by a similarly 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 this crew) 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. (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 beautiful and 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.

Give credit for this unlikely fantasy to playwright-cum-screenwriter Noah Haidle, and to director Fisher Stevens (The Cove).

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 pay phones and care about the cut of their suits. It may be unexceptional, but middling never looked so good.