Capsule Review (minor spoilers)

The Old Man & The Gun is the last film Robert Redford has said he will act in. At 82, he puts in a great performance as Forrest Tucker (not the actor from F Troop), a bank robber who is very polite and gentlemanly. It is based on a true story that was written up in The New Yorker magazine.

The cast is superb, and there are several standouts, most notably Sissy Spacek as Jewel, a woman he befriends when her pickup breaks down. There is palpable chemistry between her and Redford, and it sustains a very interesting story.

This is the first film from the Fall session of the Arthouse Film Festival. It’s a low key, but tense film, with some comedy mixed in. I highly recommend this film, and I suspect it will do well at the box office when it goes into a wider distribution at the end of this week (last week in September). I have seen ZERO advertising for it, so I suspect that it will prosper via word of mouth.

Standard Review

When I say Low Key,  it plays like Mr. Tucker’s personality – very cool and not excitable. It takes place in 1981, a time when there were no cell phones, no Internet, and pay phones. It was shot on Super 16MM film stock, which is rare these days. It gives the film a grainy-ness that a film from that time would have. You see a lot of closeups of Redford and Spacek, lines and all. It does help the mood. The soundtrack has some songs of the times, but the incidental music has a big of a jazzy feel to it.

This is a career criminal at the top of his game. He’s done this hundreds of times, with his co-conspirators – Teddy (Danny Glover) and Waller (Tom Waits). Nobody panics, no one gets hurt, and the escapes are properly planned.

Redford and Spacek are the core of the film, but all the supporting players have their moments, too. Its runtime is only 1 hour 33 minutes, but it feels like a much longer film because it takes its time and doesn’t really feel rushed.

This has probably become one of my favorite films of the year, so far. Definitely a contender.