Hollywood rarely lets actors quit on their own terms. Most classic careers fizzle out. Big names are shunted into stunt casting, their filmographies gradually filling up with forgettable duds. It takes someone special to go out on a high note. Enter, Robert Redford.
Films that sum up, or even just say something about, a career are tough to find at the best of times. When an actor’s heading into retirement age? Good luck. And with a career spanning almost 60 years and 83 films – including classics as wide-ranging as The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, The Natural, Sneakers (c’mon, it’s great) and All Is Lost (also great) – you’d be justified in thinking that Redford’s career already said it all. Then there’s The Old Man and the Gun.
Based on the real-life story of Forrest Tucker – one of the lead members of the mildly infamous “Over The Hill Gang” of pension-aged bank robbers operating in the 80s – at first glance it looks like your typical late-era project for an actor with some remaining box office clout (most likely thanks to Redford’s appearance as the villain in Captain America: The Winter Solider). It’s the kind of warm and funny tale of aging disgracefully you’d hope Robert DeNiro would get around to. Then you settle in and discover this one has a bit more going on under the battered-looking hood.
Danny Glover, Tom Waits and Robert Redford in ‘The Old Man and the Gun’. Source: Entertainment One
Billed as a “mostly true story”, here Tucker is for all intents and purposes Redford himself – a man so charming and likable it seems like it must have been a privilege to be robbed by him. He may be carrying a gun when he sticks up banks alongside his two sidekicks (Danny Glover and Tom Waits, both of whom are almost as much fun as Redford), but it’s his smile and the twinkle in his eye that disarm the staff.
That’s a problem for worn down cop John Hunt (Casey Affleck), who’s the first to figure out that these old guys are on a (small-scale and leisurely paced) crime spree. He’s the one put on their trail, though nobody really seems all that keen to bring them in. Even he can’t help but admire Tucker, a man who’s made a habit out of breaking out of almost every prison he’s been locked up in – and the montage showing his string of escapes (which uses footage from some of Redford’s earlier films) is so much fun you can’t help but agree.
Largely set in 1981, director David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Ghost Story) shoots The Old Man and the Gun like the intervening 37 years between then and filming never happened. The grainy look and retro colour scheme add a lot to the story’s time-gone-by charm: it feels like the kind of tall tale that’s been handed down across generations, and Redford plays Tucker as exactly the kind of man who lives his life with one eye on the legend.
Casey Affleck as cop John Hunt in ‘The Old Man and the Gun’. Source: Entertainment One
The only hitch in his life of crime is Jewel (Sissy Spacek), who he meets by the side of the road (it seems pretending to fix her car is a great way to dodge the pursuing cops). He’s charming, she’s disbelieving, and their chemistry is off the charts. You could build an entire film just out of these two hanging out; as it stands, their scenes together (she sticks by him even when he reveals his day job) weave magic out of next to nothing but two great actors having a good time.
Tucker doesn’t quite get everything his own way here. Lowery (whose script is based on a 2003 New Yorker article) makes sure we know Tucker’s free-wheeling life has cost him a lot and that as the sun begins to set, even he has regrets. But it’s his full-bodied commitment to his way of life that shines through. He’s a lovable rogue in a story that feels warm and timeless, a man going his own way through life from beginning to end.
It’s probably best to say this is Redford’s last film to date rather than his last ever. At the time of release the then 82-year-old said it would be his swan song, but he’s walked that back a little since then. Across his career, he’s left acting behind more than once, each time coming back after a half decade or so. Every time you count him out, he turns up again with a smile.
Watch 'The Old Man & the Gun'
Friday 22 April, 6:50pm on SBS World Movies / Now streaming at SBS On Demand
M, AD, CC
USA, 2018
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Language: English
Director: David Lowery
Starring: Robert Redford, Sissy Spacek, Casey Affleck, Danny Glover, Tom Waits
