Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang
Right from the start, we’re obviously in the hands of a savvy filmmaker.
It’s not merely the grace and charismatic star wattage with which Robert Redford strolls into the opening scene, although writer/director David Lowery deserves credit for stepping back and letting the 82-year-old actor — his blue eyes still sparkling with charm — carry the moment with the on-screen magnetism that has made him a Hollywood icon for more than half a century.
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| Having successfully eluded police pursuit after robbing a bank, Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford) furthers his camouflage as "just a guy" by stopping to help a stranded motorist (Sissy Spacek). |
No, it’s what happens next, when Redford’s Forrest Tucker — having just robbed a bank with the calm, congenial politeness of somebody purchasing a movie theater ticket — hops into his getaway car. Cinematographer Joe Anderson tracks the vehicle as it crisply takes a few corners. Ambient sounds are accompanied by our eavesdropping on police scanner chatter, as all officers are alerted to be on the lookout for a white sedan.
Tucker’s car heads toward the camera, then turns left (our right) and vanishes into some sort of alleyway. Anderson, positioned at the foreground of this city block, slowly pans along the cross-street, momentarily focusing on two children playing. In the background, we hear the sounds of a car stopping, the door opening and closing as somebody exits, a pause, and then another car door opening and closing, and the sound of a different engine roaring into life.
Anderson’s camera slides along and reaches the hard-packed dirt of a vacant lot — all of this having been one continuous shot — just as Tucker bursts onto the street, now driving a fresh vehicle.
Absolutely brilliant use of the cinematic medium.
I settled back, knowing we were in for a treat. Lowery doesn’t disappoint.
The Old Man and the Gun is a mildly — but only mildly — romanticized dramedy based on the audacious life of Forrest Tucker, a career criminal first arrested for car theft in Stuart, Florida, in 1936. He was 15 years old. Over a span of decades that found him in prison as often as out, he ultimately developed a method enhanced by his advancing age, and rehearsed with the care and precision of a Royal Shakespearean actor.
Frightened tellers nonetheless commented on the old guy’s almost apologetic deference, and the fact that he smiled with such equanimity. They practically wanted to help him rob their bank. It was early 1980, and the George Burns/Art Carney crime dramedy Going in Style still was playing in movie theaters. As a result, when police officers in Texas and Oklahoma compared notes regarding a series of similar bank hold-ups, the as-yet-unidentified Tucker was dubbed head of “The Over-the-Hill Gang.”
(Actually, The Over-the-Hill Gang is an occasionally charming 1969 Walter Brennan Western. But I digress.)
Clearly, Tucker’s life was made for the movies. I’m surprised it took so long.
Lowery’s film is built from a series of chance encounters and intimate relationships, along with the engaging banter that anchors both. He has a terrific ear for dialogue, all of it delivered with impeccable timing by a talented ensemble cast that includes seasoned pros (Sissy Spacek, Danny Glover) and equally gifted members of subsequent generations (notably Casey Affleck).
This is old-school filmmaking at its finest: smoothly laid-back, quietly accomplished, unhurried, confident in the strength of the story — and the actors playing their roles — to keep us captivated. Lowery masterfully orchestrates every detail, down to Lisa Zeno Churgin’s deft editing and composer Daniel Hart’s saucy, small-combo jazz score. The latter frequently adds a droll counterpoint to on-screen events.
But back to our story:
Shortly after the clever getaway described above, Tucker “blends” innocuously into the landscape by stopping to help a stranded motorist peering helplessly under the hood of her vintage truck. She turns out to be Jewel (Spacek), to whom Tucker — impulsively, and clearly to his surprise — takes a shine. (Redford is sogood at such subtle reactions.)
He gives her a lift; they repair to a diner. They flirt; he almost confesses. They exchange phone numbers, and we know we’ll see her again. (Jewel, although fictitious, is based on Tucker’s third wife.)
Elsewhere, small-town Texas cop John Hunt (Affleck) politely endures acknowledgments of his 40th birthday, both at work and at home. Much as he loathes the very thought of birthdays, it’s impossible to begrudge the modestly loving celebration orchestrated by his wife (Tika Sumpter, as Maureen) and their two adorable young children, Abilene (Ari Elizabeth Johnson) and Tyler (Teagan Johnson).
Their shared dynamic is warm and deeply touching. Sumpter’s Maureen is patient and wisely non-committal when confronted by John’s dissatisfaction with a job that seems to go nowhere: No matter how many messes he cleans up, there’s always another one. Affleck gets considerable mileage from his hangdog, slightly bedraggled bearing; he exudes the weary chagrin of a man half-convinced that his life’s work is futile. And, perhaps worse, uninspired.
Hunt needs a challenge. Little does he realize that one’s about to drop into his lap.
By sheer caprice, Hunt happens to be waiting in the teller queue at the next bank Tucker decides to hit. The hold-up goes so smoothly that the officer isn’t even aware it has taken place, until after the manager announces as much, Tucker already long gone. And that is too much to endure. Hunt has his new mission in life.
(John Hunt is as authentic as Tucker: a then-40-year-old Austin police officer described as having a “drooping mustache and slight paunch,” both of which Affleck nails. But Hunt never was present within one of Tucker’s targeted banks; that’s a cheeky fabrication on Lowery’s part.)
The film subsequently divides its attention between gentle romance — Tucker and Jewel, as we wonder whether he’ll be entirely candid with her — and methodical police procedural, as Hunt plunges headfirst into the grinding, pre-Internet investigative territory of dusty old files and library newspaper microfilm scanners. (One must marvel at the notion of any progress back then, when interstate crime was involved.)
All the while, Lowery toys with us: Do we really want Tucker to get caught?
Spacek’s Jewel is simultaneously gentle and ruggedly high-spirited: a woman with no attachments — her husband deceased, their children grown and living elsewhere — who revels in the new-found freedom of being able to do whatever she wants. Spacek’s smile is as radiant as Redford’s, and we’re charmed by their shared chemistry.
Although at first blush Tucker seems a lone wolf, that’s not the case; Glover and Tom Waits are quiet hoots as — respectively — Teddy and Waller, his two equally seasoned comrades in crime. They’re a tightly knit team, but Teddy worries about advancing age and diminishing abilities; are they pushing their luck? Tucker scoffs at such a notion.
Keith Carradine pops up so briefly, as a police captain, that you’ll scarcely register his presence. He has one line.
Production designer Scott Kuzio masterfully re-creates the early 1980s, down to the now almost laughably retro style of the bank buildings and interiors. Anderson’s cinematographic palette is chosen with equal care: the colder, sterile, institutional look of grays, whites and primary colors.
The saga builds to a climax that we can’t help anticipating, but that’s not the end of Lowery’s film. A wholly unexpected epilog suddenly introduces an even more fascinating aspect of Tucker’s career. We can’t help shaking our heads in wonder.
Lowery based his screenplay on David Grann’s thoroughly absorbing New Yorker feature article, published on January 27, 2003, and built from a series of interviews with Tucker. Toward the conclusion of that fascinating piece, Tucker — clearly obsessed with the need to leave some sort of legacy, after a life dominated by an endless series of bad choices — laments, “When I die, no one will remember me.”
Well, that certainly isn’t true. Given that this marks Redford’s well-publicized swan song — and such an accomplished one — Forrest Tucker has been guaranteed immortality.
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