The Old Man and the Gun

The film is easy to watch and hard to hate.  Oscar stuff aside, Redford gives a charming performance sure to leave a lasting impression on anyone who watches.  I kept thinking of his character’s adventures as a metaphor for life, but considering Forrest Tucker’s decades spent taking money with charm as a metaphor for Redford’s career as a movie star could work, too.  This reading of the movie works especially well in light of Redford’s quickly recanted announcement of his retirement from acting.  You’ve got to keep doing what you love, after all.  As the relentless, unrepentant bank robber points out, your life’s work is your life.

The Good:
The Old Man and the Gun is quite amusing and engaging, despite its leisurely pace and lack of manufactured tension. People easily annoyed by conspicuous cinematography or experimental narrative should love this film. It’s not at all confusing or high concept. You’ll never find yourself fretting, “I’m totally lost! What’s going on?” This is a traditionally told, straight-forward story with a beginning, middle, and end that proceeds in an expected direction and arrives somewhere in a timely manner. It’s kind of a throwback, a movie set in the grainy, grimy past when cars, home stereos, and men’s suits were all big and rectangular and people still went to diners and drank a lot of Pespi products and Budweiser (as I glean from product placement). It’s a film that makes us think fondly, “Remember when movies just told you a story, and outlaws were cool, and Robert Redford was there?”

It’s a simple story, yet it’s also the kind of film that reminds us that such simplicity is an illusion since human life is deceptively complex and messy. I love the philosophical bent of the film. You don’t have to think about your own mortality, and what the meaning of life is, and how morality works, and any number of other questions as you watch this. But certainly you can. The movie gives us plenty of time and space to think and teases us with innumerable existential conundrums. As I mentioned before, it’s hard not to get the idea that this (mostly true) story is some kind of elaborate joke…just like life.

I love the moment in the movie when someone asks Redford’s character, Forrest Tucker, if there’s a reason he lives in a house with such a pronounced view of the adjacent cemetery. And he’s like, “No.” It’s a deeply philosophical film.

There was also a moment really late in the film when I suddenly thought, “Okay, so this guy is an adrenaline junkie. He’s clearly committing these crimes to feel something. And he’s a lifelong criminal. And he’s made some decisions in his personal life that are hard to defend. And he lies very easily all the time.” Suddenly, it hit me. “Wait! Is this man a sociopath?”

And I thought, “No. He can’t be. He’s so nice. He always puts people at ease…with his glib, superficial charm!!!!”

On paper, Forrest Tucker sure sounds like a sociopath. You could write down his exploits and tick every box on the checklist.

And that’s one thing I really loved about this film. Over the past several decades our society has become increasingly obsessed with sociopaths, but when we see them depicted in films, they don’t usually look like this. Now you could say, “But maybe that’s because this man isn’t a sociopath.” And I could answer, “Maybe nobody is.” I’m not saying various psychiatric problems that can overlap with sociopathy (which is not a diagnosis) don’t exist. I’m just saying that perhaps we sometimes pathologize to simplify. Maybe our idea of the sociopath tells us more about our society than about any individual.

Despite his criminal behavior, Tucker is very clearly the hero of this movie. He seems more like a romantic outlaw from our past than any kind of dangerous person. He’s not dangerous at all in the traditional sense. He just has a gun. He doesn’t use it. And even though he lives to steal, he’s always pleasant and considerate to others.  Left to the other characters is any fretting or reconciling the moral ambiguity of his behavior (if you can call it ambiguity. He’s a lifelong bank robber who robs for the love of stealing).  Even the audience isn’t forced to face unpleasant aspects of his character, though the film does raise certain questions (especially in one pointed scene with Elizabeth Moss).

As played by Redford, Forrest Tucker is a character you really root for–even if you don’t know how to justify your unqualified embrace of him. In some ways, he’s more myth than man.  Redford is wonderfully charismatic in the role, perfect for the part.

The supporting cast is great, too. Honestly, I thought Sissy Spacek gave an even stronger performance than Redford (whom I really liked in this role). And whatever the scandals of his personal life, Casey Affleck is and has always been a talented actor. Had the movie been written and presented a bit differently, Affleck might be getting Oscar buzz, too (though they already gave him an Oscar and the current social climate in Hollywood is probably not great for him).

Danny Glover perfectly fits the role of one of Tucker’s accomplices. And Tom Waits just absolutely killed me with one delightful moment that will forever live in infamy in my mind.

I also thought the movie was well cast in general. Even in the smallest supporting roles, the performers were uniformly excellent. (I was going to say that they shone, but, actually, my point is that they didn’t stand out. They all fit in perfectly, and not one of them seemed out of place.)

I also enjoyed the score and soundtrack, both extremely mellow and melodic.

Best Action Sequence:
My favorite part of the whole movie comes near the end when we see a montage of Tucker’s past escapes (at least one of them featuring footage of a much younger Robert Redford). The rapid journey through all these escapes is so amusing and so impressive. It made me laugh in delight as I watched. But honestly, the best part is that this man lived a long, storied, breathless life full of all of these dramatic exploits, yet the movie focuses on a year when he is in his seventies, meandering in and robbing banks just as slow and easy as you please, then drifting over to the diner to talk to a pretty widow about her horses. The sequel will probably just be footage of a gentle breeze blowing over Tucker’s grave. Like it or not, that will be the sequel to all of our exploits. (I mean, I believe in an afterlife, but the David Lowery movie I’m imagining won’t be about that. If it’s anything like this film, we’ll just see a quick montage of everything happening in heaven and hell near the end.)

Best Scene:
There’s a moment with Elizabeth Moss that elevates the movie precisely because what it reveals is so frustrating.

But I think my husband’s favorite scene probably is the best one overall. It’s a rare moment we don’t see in the theatrical trailer, so I won’t spoil much. Let’s just say Casey Affleck gets a surprise visitor in the restroom. (I’d say that description ventures well beyond vague into actively misleading.)

Best Scene Visually:
The scene I just mentioned has a very captivating look, but there’s another great moment visually when we see Redford’s character casing a bank from a neighboring roof.

Scene Most Likely to Have a Life Beyond the Movie:
Yesterday morning, mere hours before I saw The Old Man and the Gun, I was thinking about a particular moment in the movie Gremlins, and in this film, Tom Waits has a monologue which is bound to make anyone watching think of Gremlins, too. It made me laugh so hard. This (and Sissy Spacek’s whole performance) was my favorite part of the movie.

Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Robert Redford:
I don’t think that Robert Redford will get a nomination for this performance because Best Actor is so competitive. But he might. Redford is basically playing a charming, affable old gentleman (who happens to be a career thief and potentially a pathological liar). Here’s the thing, if the character did not come across as charming and affable and irresistibly sympathetic to the audience, then this movie would fail completely. Robert Redford’s screen presence and charisma make the movie. Without Redford’s performance, there would literally be no reason to watch this movie. And not just anyone can play a charming, eighty-year-old Robert Redford type. Also, his stares are evocative. Of what? His silences leave you plenty of room to ponder that.

I like the moment best when he drops off the woman and her son.

Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Sissy Spacek:
Let me be clear. Sissy Spacek is not going to get an Oscar nomination for her work here. All I’m saying is, why not? I’m almost positive Claire Foy will be nominated for her intense turn as Janet Armstrong in First Man, so I couldn’t help comparing Spacek’s performance here to that standard, and I prefer Spacek. She so naturally embodies the character. Nothing is showy, yet there’s such authenticity and depth of feeling in her every moment on screen. If they let me pick, I would nominate her over Redford, too.

She always makes the most of her non-verbal moments. It’s almost pleasurable to watch her character have a realization or make a difficult decision. And she has fantastic chemistry with Redford and a sense of comic timing that works perfectly with his.

Maybe it helps, too, that she’s more convincing than average as a woman from Texas since she actually did grow up in Texas and has some inkling of how Texans actually sound and behave.

The Negatives:
Except for one scene, every single “good part” in this movie is also in the trailer. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know the whole story, and you’ve seen the movie in miniature. Watching the trailer takes two and a half minutes. Watching the movie takes one and a half hours.

I mean, it’s not a long movie, and though its pacing is leisurely, watching it is not taxing, never unpleasant. But the trailer is the movie.  So…

Some people are bound to complain that since the real Forrest Tucker lived such an exciting life, the movie about him could have been more thrilling, fast-paced, gripping, meaty.

But I’m not actually going to make that complaint because I think choosing to focus on Tucker’s slower paced twilight years was precisely the point of the movie.

Here’s where I think The Old Man and the Gun actually stumbles. Casey Affleck’s character needs more development. His part needs to be beefed up. As is, the actor gets plenty of screentime, but the character remains frustratingly thin. Affleck does what he can with the part, but he isn’t given much.

In general, I try to avoid criticizing what a movie doesn’t do and to focus instead on what it does give us. But in this case, I just can’t help myself. I think The Old Man and the Gun would be stronger if we had co-protagonists. I mean, the title is evocative of a lot of things (The Old Man and the Sea, the gun the old man flashes…). But much of the movie involves Officer John Hunt trying to catch the men he has dubbed, “The Over the Hill Gang.” So, in keeping with that Old West feel, maybe Redford is the Old Man, and the officer chasing him is The Gun. (You could also make the weary, depressed, forty-year-old police officer the Old Man, and the happy, exciting bank robber the Gun.) The point is, each of them finds meaning in the other. But Affleck’s journey just feels really rushed and incomplete. By the end, the way he feels about Redford’s character has changed, but the audience just has to say, “Oh yes, he probably feels this way now, and I can see why that could be.” We don’t actually watch this change happening on screen. The character is underwritten, and much of his act of growing (something we need to see) is absent. Affleck does the best he can with what he’s given, but it’s not quite enough. On a side note, his incessant mumbling to his wife (well played by Tika Sumpter) gets a little old.  I know they’re trying not to wake up the kids, but it’s hard to make out what he’s saying sometimes.

I’m not too familiar with writer/director David Lowery’s other films, though I did like his version of Pete’s Dragon (also featuring Robert Redford). I think here Lowery gets good performances from his entire cast, but perhaps the writing could be stronger, mainly in the shaping of Affleck’s character.

Maybe I should mention, too, that a group of women in the theater with us found it laughably implausible that a white police officer in 1981 Dallas would have an African American wife and interracial children and face so little unpleasantness from the community.  I must confess that I didn’t move to Dallas until 1983 when I was four years old.  These women may have a point.  I lack the experience to be sure.  But it’s also true that when the movie focuses on Hunt’s personal life, it doesn’t leave his house or car.  We rarely see the Hunt family interacting in the community.  Maybe the family does feel pressure from neighbors and acquaintances.  Maybe that’s why they’re so close knit, always hanging out together in their own spaces.  I have a lot of personal, anecdotal evidence of how people of mixed race were treated in Texas in the 1980s and 1990s, but since I am not of mixed race myself, none of this really matters.  After all, I can comment only on what I saw and heard.  These women were all in emphatic agreement, though, so they may be onto something.

Overall:
I enjoyed The Old Man and the Gun. Redford’s leisurely bank robber reminded me fondly of my grandpa who enjoyed taking nothing so much as his time. It’s a captivating performance of a bafflingly charming character, complemented by a strong supporting turn from Sissy Spacek. The movie is slow, not boring, just pointedly unhurried. Even though the story is engaging, there’s still a chance you may fall asleep, but if so, you’ll have the most pleasant dreams of you’re life. I’m sure of it.