The Old Man & the Gun – first look review

Robert Redford’s announce­ment that he was to retire from act­ing fol­low­ing a career span­ning five decades pre­ced­ed the pre­mière of David Lowery’s The Old Man & the Gun. Choos­ing to go out on his own terms feels like a very Red­ford thing to do – and if For­rest Tuck­er real­ly is to be his final on-screen role, then he couldn’t have cho­sen a bet­ter note to end on.

Based on a New York Times arti­cle about an elder­ly bank rob­ber who just couldn’t stop doing the one thing he loved, Lowery’s film is a warm, kind-heart­ed por­trait of an excep­tion­al­ly charm­ing crim­i­nal, and those that came to know him towards the end of his remark­able life. It’s hard to imag­ine any­one else in the role of Tuck­er than Red­ford, who spends most of his time on screen smil­ing. This gets at the heart of what Lowery’s film real­ly is: he doesn’t seek to pass any judge­ment over Tucker’s crim­i­nal career, but instead just cap­ture some­thing of his strange celebrity.

Sis­sy Spacek stars oppo­site Red­ford as Jew­el, a ranch-own­er who encoun­ters Tuck­er in the ear­ly 1960s by pure coin­ci­dence, and falls for his charms while also nev­er real­ly believ­ing a word he says. Over the next two decades they peri­od­i­cal­ly meet again, and the best scenes in the film are their din­er exchanges, where they talk about their lives, and we get to wit­ness two bril­liant actors with excel­lent chem­istry sim­ply exist­ing on screen together.

Mean­while, Casey Affleck is (the apt­ly named) John Hunt, a detec­tive charged with bring­ing For­rest to jus­tice, and we glimpse his own life with wife Mau­reen (Tika Sumpter) and their very cute chil­dren. Just as For­rest can’t seem to quit his law­break­ing ways, Hunt can’t get used to the qui­et life and lack of inter­est any­one else has in appre­hend­ing Tuck­er. Round­ing out the cast are Tom Waits and Dan­ny Glover as Tucker’s accom­plices, known col­lec­tive­ly as ​‘The Over the Hill Gang’. Togeth­er they don’t share much screen time, but it’s hard to mind too much when Red­ford is so com­pelling on his own.

If the stakes seem excep­tion­al­ly low for a film about a bank rob­ber, it’s because the film is real­ly more about the tit­u­lar old man than the gun. Low­ery is an excep­tion­al film­mak­er and a cin­e­mat­ic chameleon if there ever was once, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly brought us sto­ries about exis­ten­tial ghosts and a CGI drag­on – but if there’s one over­ar­ch­ing theme con­nect­ing his films it’s the pow­er of the tales we tell ourselves.

“I’m not talk­ing about mak­ing a liv­ing,” explains Tuck­er, when asked about his com­pul­sive crim­i­nal­i­ty. ​“I’m talk­ing about liv­ing.” This one is as much about Redford’s endur­ing celebri­ty as it is his final role (pho­tographs and footage of a young Red­ford in ​‘The Chase’ dri­ve that mes­sage home) and it’s dif­fi­cult to not be drawn in by its con­sid­er­able charm.