The Irish Mail on Sunday

Is the Sundance Kid really riding into the sunset?

If this really is Robert Redford’s final film, he rides into the sunset in a charming, minor-key delight

- MATTHEW BOND

The Old Man & The Gun Cert: 12A 1hr 33mins

Afew months ago, Robert Redford announced he was retiring from acting, and at one rather beautiful point in his new film, The Old Man & The Gun, it appears that old Sundance really is going to ride off, if not into the sunset, then certainly the sunrise. How fitting, I thought, how lovely.

Then I remembered that, more recently, Redford has expressed some regret about being so categorica­l about calling time on his acting career. After all, he’s only 82, while Clint Eastwood – six years his senior – has a new film out next year. So there’s surely no rush for Redford, particular­ly if every now and again he can grace a picture as gently charming as this one.

With a cool, soft-jazz soundtrack, an absolutely gorgeous supporting performanc­e from Sissy Spacek and fond distant echoes of Redford classics such as Butch Cassidy and The Sting, The Old Man & The Gun is a gentle, minor-key delight. Which is not something you can normally say of a film about an armed bank robber.

Based on a true story, and to some extent hampered by that, Redford, of course, plays the old man of the title: one Forrest Tucker, who lives for robbing banks despite the fact that, as the film begins, it’s clear he won’t be seeing 70 again. His method is simple, involving a briefcase, a false moustache and absolutely impeccable manners.

There is also the small matter of the gun of the title, about which director David Lowery, who made the surprising­ly good Pete’s Dragon with Redford a couple of years ago, cleverly keeps us guessing. Does a robber as charming as Tucker – time and again he is described by his victims as ‘a gentleman’ – really carry a loaded weapon?

Relishing a role that plays to all his screen strengths, as well as harnessing his age to definite advantage, Redford is a smiling, twinkly eyed delight as Tucker, the sort of bank robber who can still handle a getaway car but has the experience to know that a good way of losing his police pursuers is to pull over and offer help to a damsel in broken-down-truck distress. Which is how Jewel (Spacek) – widow, horse-lover and nobody’s fool – comes into his life.

Redford and Spacek, who will be 70 next year, are lovely together, slowly creating a screen chemistry that eventually slightly unbalances the film. They meet, they spar, they tease. He tells her that riding is definitely on his list of ‘things I would like to do but haven’t done yet’.

‘Well, you’d better hurry up,’ she jokes, eyeing those handsome but craggy features, not to mention his hearing aid. ‘Oh yeah,’ he deadpans, with a flash of that famous Redford smile. ‘Why would that be?’ We want more of this sort of delicious thing – more of them growing gorgeously and photogenic­ally old together and less of the slightly repetitive and notably straightfo­rward business of robbing American banks in 1981, a time when CCTV was still in its infancy, messages were sent by fax and bank tellers worked at open counters.

But just because Lowery keeps having to drag the camera back to the robberies isn’t all bad news. It turns out, despite initial appearance­s to the contrary, that Tucker is part of a three-man gang, quickly dubbed ‘the over-thehill gang’ by the media. Danny Glover is slightly wasted as one of his partners in crime but gravelvoic­ed singer turned occasional actor Tom Waits is an absolute hoot as the other. His ‘and that’s why I hate Christmas’ speech is one of the highlights.

Casey Affleck, with whom Lowery has worked on both Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and A Ghost Story, is solid as the assiduous police detective on Tucker’s trail. But either Lowery is the sort of director good actors are queuing up to work with, or something strange has happened in the editing, with Elisabeth Moss popping up in a strange little cameo that

‘Redford is a twinkly eyed delight… he and Spacek slowly create a screen chemistry’

promises much but ultimately delivers very little, and Keith Carradine’s role disappeari­ng almost entirely, leaving him gracing the credits more than he does the actual film.

The film’s only serious weakness is its lack of heft. Tucker, we are eventually asked to believe, is simply a man who is only truly happy when he is robbing banks, although escaping from assorted jails runs a close second.

Now, this sort of puddle-deep character analysis might be fine for a commercial caper but not for the more thoughtful kind of production that Lowery appears to have in mind here but never quite delivers. Maybe that’s why the distinctly caper-style postscript feels a touch disappoint­ing. Neverthele­ss, The Old Man &

The Gun has to go down as a success, and ‘a must’ for anyone with a serious interest in Redford’s long and remarkable career. If this is the Sundance Kid’s swansong, it’s certainly a good one.

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 ??  ?? liFE’s WoRK: Robert Redford as the gentleman bank robber and, left, with Casey Affleck and, above left, with Sissy Spacek
liFE’s WoRK: Robert Redford as the gentleman bank robber and, left, with Casey Affleck and, above left, with Sissy Spacek
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