3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for drug content, mild sensuality and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.7.17
Remakes rarely live up to their
predecessors.
This is one of the exceptions.
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| Once Jesus (John Ortiz, second from right) realizes that his three new "friends" — from left, Willie (Morgan Freeman), Joe (Michael Caine) and Albert (Alan Arkin) — are serious about their desire to rob a bank, he does his best to save them from rookie mistakes. |
Director Zach Braff’s re-booted Going in Style charms from beginning to
end, thanks to scripter Theodore Melfi’s savvy update of the 1979 original.
That film seriously misled audiences with an advertising campaign that promised
droll hijinks from its veteran cast — George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg
— when, in fact, it was a serious downer that became progressively more
depressing.
Braff and Melfi learned from that
mistake. Their new Style makes ample
comedic use of its fresh trio of veteran scene-stealers — Michael Caine, Morgan
Freeman and Alan Arkin — while supplying some trenchant social commentary,
which was absent the first time around.
It’s also obvious, in the wake of
the Wells Fargo scandal and other recent examples of greedy, soulless financial
skullduggery, that banks — and bank officers — are likely to spend the next
several years competing alongside Nazis, as go-to movie villains. I can’t
imagine a more fitting punishment.
Best friends Joe (Caine), Willie
(Freeman) and Albert (Arkin) live across the street from each other in a fading
Brooklyn neighborhood. Willie and Albert share one home, their combined pension
and Social Security payments just enough to keep them in modest comfort. Joe
has taken in his daughter and beloved granddaughter, Brooklyn (Joey King); his
monthly pension check is barely enough to meet the mortgage.
Or it was, back when the checks
still arrived. They’ve been absent of late, thanks to “restructuring” by the
company that has absorbed Semtech Steel, where the three men spent their
working careers.
The first body blow comes with a
warning notice that the bank holding Joe’s mortgage is about to foreclose; the
killing punch follows quickly, when a (very brave) Semtech flack gathers
employees and retirees, and announces that the new corporate owners have moved
all operations overseas. And that all pensions will be dissolved in order to
help cover outstanding debt.
Adding insult to injury, this
heartless financial rape will be overseen by the very bank holding Joe’s
mortgage.
