Movie: The Old Man & the Gun

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mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
Okay, Robert Redord is still pretty good looking, and he and Sissy Spacek make a good movie couple with real chemistry. But I dreaded this movie, thinking that it would be a feel-good show with lots of charming moments and not much to take home with me. I believe I was wrong. This is based on the life of an actual bank robber, and it is difficult to tell if he was addicted to robbing banks or to escaping jail and prison, or both. He was certainly an adrenaline junkie who only breathed free when being chased by a dozen squad cars with people shooting at him. The movie does go a little easy, because some of the real person's escapes and imprisonments were gruesome, and we mostly see him at liberty and expertly robbing banks. But the film slowly unearths the underlying misery and the dark compulsions of this seemingly dapper, sweet and charming guy. Not to mention the scraggly city cop who eventually tracks him down before the feds show up to steal the show. It's bright and lovely and cheerful, except that it is also really dark. Redford says this is his show biz swan song. I'm not so sure. P.S. Seventy-five percent of the audience, a nearly full house, were over sixty; I guess us old people want to watch old people rob banks.

 

jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,570
27,079
Carmel Valley, CA
Yeah, Redford has the best makeup artists and lighting gurus. His face looks like a close up of the moon. I mean, severe acne pocks.

 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
Ha-ha! peck, I see what you mean, but you have to take into account how beat up and ravaged by time is the beholder, like me for example. He does look like the tree in The Wizard of Oz ... fine looking gentleman. If you read the biography of the actual Forrest Tucker, on whom the character is based, considering his life experience, maybe Redford isn't haggard enough. It's amusing that, in the film, he uses his age as a cover for a big clunky conspicuous "hearing aid" that is actually an ear piece for a police radio monitor, so he can know if the law is closing in during a robbery, which I think was an actual device used by the real perpetrator. Some famous person said his goal in life was to be an old man with a good face ... which is somewhat in the eye of the beholder.

 
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