The Old Man & the Gun, written and directed by David Lowery - Seven out of 10

The Old Man & the Gun, written and directed by David Lowery

Seven out of 10

It is tempting to dismiss this motion picture – and this will probably happen in this note – in spite of a cast that includes Robert Redford, such a legend that we need not insist, Sissy Spacek, another giant,  Danny Glover, Tom Waits and the recent winner of the Academy Award – but controversial nevertheless – Casey Affleck.

Now for the disadvantages:

The subject is more than familiar.

All the angles of bank robbery have been explored and it is hard – perhaps impossible – to compete with quintessential works like Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid –wherein Redford has had a glorious contribution – and other such landmarks.

Furthermore, even the concept of robbing banks by “Over the hill” old criminals has been there before and the déjà vu feeling is made worse when the predecessors have had much more value.

Going in Style, the 1979 classic, not the recent flop, was an extraordinary example of the Perfect Job, with George Burns in scintillating form, as were his partners in crime, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg.

Critics seem to have loved this Old Man & his Gun, so you can very well discard this evaluation, if you have not done it yet.

It is always a question of “Merit Finder or Fault Finder” or as Shakespeare has said it in Hamlet:

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”

You could look at Robert Redford and say wow, what a tremendous actor he has always been.

Or think about what the recently deceased, regretted, outstanding winner of two Oscars, writer of masterpieces like All the President’s Men, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride, Marathon Man and other great movies has said about Redford.

In his marvelous Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman, mentions how easy it was to find someone like the acclaimed actor – just throw a pebble on the Malibu or some other Californian beach – and then the embarrassing attitudes he had after his Sundance role.

Redford had initiated a project of making a film with Goldman, but after the release and success of Butch Cassidy, the actor calls the writer to say that he does not want to continue…

Why?

Because he felt that the image that the fans now had of him as legendary, macho hero would not match what was about to take place in the new, would be film that the screenplay author had worked so much on…

And this is not the end, although the arrogant, self-important, precious, superior, selfish take is not unique – there are two cases where Dustin Hoffman, on the set of Marathon Man and Al Pacino come out as ruthless, to say the least.

William Goldman had worked on the script for All the President’s Men – due to the circumstances explained in the book, a very difficult task – talking to Redford through his secretary…

The writer would call the assistant, she would call the actor and then back, in a complicated, preposterous communication, and later on, after months of toiling laboriously, the star invites the author to his flat in New York, only to take the project away…at least for some time.

Goldman says it was the worst moment of his life – or one of them anyway.

As for The Old Man…well, there is not much to say, in my opinion, except that it is just common, not out of the ordinary.

The Old Bank Robber is somewhat more interesting than the usual malefactor, criminal type, but not the ultimate role model…

Or is he?

Yes, there is perhaps a lesson that he can give us, in the sense that he did what he liked in his life, flawed as it certainly was.

This is one of the rules of Happiness – find your calling and make that your job, thus getting paid, making a living from what you enjoy doing anyway.

To find that calling you need to identify – what you like, what you are good at and what has meaning for you and where these intersect, that is where you can decide and take one of the possibilities…

Not if you find you would like to rob banks and The Old Man has the most important lesson to teach…