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THE OLD MAN & THE GUN (12A)
I’M not sure I believe Robert Redford when he says this gentle crime drama will be his final film.
But if the 82-year-old does manage to resist stepping in front of another camera, this will be a pretty classy way to bow out.
The film is based on a 2003 New Yorker article about Forrest Tucker, a career criminal who broke out of San Quentin prison at the age of 70 and went on a bank-robbing spree.
The story is set in 1981 but there’s something of the dandy Highwayman about Tucker.
He may or may not have a pistol in his pocket, but his main weapons are a silver tongue, a warm voice and those famous twinkly baby blues.
Distress
While making his escape from the film’s opening robbery he calmly pulls over to the side of the freeway to help an elderly damsel in distress.
The recently widowed Jewel (Sissy Spacek) has broken down. She thinks this nattily attired old gentleman is her knight in shining armour. We know otherwise. What looks like a hearing aid is actually attached to a police scanner. And the last thing the cops are looking for is an elderly couple peering beneath the bonnet of a broken down motor.
It turns out Tucker knows nothing about engines, so he gives her a lift to a diner where they drink coffee.
When he tells her he’s a bank robber, Jewel thinks it’s just part of his patter. But the chemistry between the two begins to spark.
Tucker keeps popping in on Jewel as his crime spree crosses state borders. When Casey Affleck’s detective John Hunt joins the dots the papers dub him and his elderly accomplices (Tom Waits and Danny Glover) the “Over The Hill Gang”.
Towards the end, Lowery reveals the extent of Tucker’s criminal career with a sequence that recycles footage from Redford’s earlier films.
It works beautifully even if it does feel a little like an awards ceremony montage.