Going in Style

What does one call an OG sto­ry when the gangstas are not Orig­i­nal Gang­sters, but remake gang­sters? RG? Is this where RG-bar­gy comes from? This review has digressed before it’s begun. It could be age catch­ing up to us. Or per­haps when Hol­ly­wood isn’t using its imag­i­na­tion, our own minds must wander.

Based on the sto­ry ​‘Here on a Vis­it’ by Edward Can­non, the 1979 ver­sion of Going in Style was the fea­ture debut of 28-year-old direc­tor Mar­tin Brest, who lat­er achieved smash suc­cess with the likes of Bev­er­ly Hills Cop. It was a dry, low-key com­e­dy fea­tur­ing old vaude­vil­lian George Burns, come­di­an Art Car­ney and method-act­ing leg­end Lee Stras­berg, as a trio of retirees who elect to rob a bank with min­i­mal plan­ning, because, why not? It might be fun, if they get caught it’s free room and board for a few years, and all they’re doing oth­er­wise is wait­ing for social secu­ri­ty cheques and death.

2017’s Going in Style is the big-bud­get attempt at direc­to­r­i­al career reboot for unfash­ion­able fun­ny­man auteur Zack Braff, who has assem­bled his own sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an com­e­dy super­group in Michael Caine, Mor­gan Free­man and Alan Arkin. In keep­ing with the cus­tom­ary ​‘more is more’ approach of remake cul­ture, this Going in Style mines the finan­cial cri­sis for deep­er moti­va­tion for the old timers’ rob­bery – Caine’s house is being fore­closed on, and all three pro­tag­o­nists see their steel­work­ers’ pen­sion fund dissolved.

Where Brest’s film unfold­ed with pigeon-feed­ing scenes and wise­cracks amid sighs, Braff gives us a loud machine gun rob­bery in the first five min­utes, the ban­dit speechi­fy­ing ​“You’re a casu­al­ty of a cor­rupt sys­tem that no longer serves the peo­ple!” It is here Caine’s char­ac­ter gets the inspi­ra­tion to pull a bank job – his scheme to save his home by rob­bing the bank to pay the bank echo­ing Hell or High Water by way of Last Vegas. And a bit of Ocean’s Eleven, for when they do com­mit their heist they wear Rat Pack masks.

Between the insti­ga­tion and the exe­cu­tion, there are ref­er­ences to sore knees and mus­ings on how many years they have left. There’s a fun­ny slap­stick sequence where Caine, Free­man and Arkin test their crim­i­nal chops at a dis­count super­mar­ket, only to knock over dis­plays and make chase on a mobil­i­ty scoot­er. Sev­er­al episodes of Sein­feld are being ref­er­enced here, from old peo­ple steal­ing in ​‘The Book­store’ to George’s Geri­atric Bike Gang shenani­gans in ​‘The But­ter Shave’.

Indeed, there’s a cameo from Sein­feld reg­u­lar Siob­han Fal­lon Hogan. There are cameos from Kenan Thomp­son as a wise­crack­ing retail man­ag­er, and Matt Dil­lon, who smirks his way through his role as the cop, and Christo­pher Lloyd, embar­rass­ing­ly hung out to dry in some cru­el par­o­dy of demen­tia, and Peter Ser­afi­now­icz, in a per­plex­ing role as the sim­ple­ton ston­er dead­beat dad to Caine’s grandchild.

All these grab-bag ref­er­ences to com­e­dy enter­tain­ment glo­ry give Going in Style a sooth­ing veneer but nev­er cheer its hol­low cen­tre. A roman­tic sub­plot with Ann-Mar­gret and Arkin sim­ply reminds us that she’s been play­ing love inter­est to aged cranks since 1993’s Grumpy Old Men, while he’s been moon­light­ing as dying grand­dad since 2006’s Lit­tle Miss Sun­shine. Braff, who in his Gar­den State days ambi­tious­ly aped tech­niques from Woody Allen, Pedro Almod­ó­var and Hal Ash­by, is now con­tent to visu­al­ly exper­i­ment with a series of smooth but redun­dant­ly mis­be­got­ten split-screens.

The eco­nom­ic wok­e­ness of the plot would seem rote in most movies, and seems par­tic­u­lar­ly insin­cere when the exec­u­tive pro­duc­er here is Trump’s Trea­sury Sec­re­tary, Steven Mnuchin. This is not even to men­tion that while the title is Going in Style, these good old boys don’t actu­al­ly ​‘go’. If the orig­i­nal was about thumb­ing one’s nose at mor­tal­i­ty but ulti­mate­ly fac­ing it, there’s a hap­py end­ing this time, sug­gest­ing maybe you can pre­tend that the end will not come as long as you can fan­ta­sise of a payday.