The Old Man and the Gun review – Redford radiates swagger and class

Robert Redford’s career ends not with a bang but a caper, the sort that he might have romped through half a century ago. Reportedly Redford’s final film, The Old Man and the Gun will surely earn the the 82-year-old one final best actor Oscar nomination for a performance of immense swagger and class.

It’s directed by David Lowery, who is fast gaining a reputation as one of the harder-to-pin down talents currently working in Hollywood. Anyone who struggled with Lowery’s last film, the peculiar metaphysical drama A Ghost Story, might expect something similarly chewy this time around. But he was also responsible for a faithful recent remake of Disney’s Pete’s Dragon (which also featured Redford), and here creates a film that cleaves so closely to the aesthetic of 60s/early 70s Hollywood that it might as well be pickled in aspic.

Adapted from David Grann’s New Yorker article of the same name, The Old Man and the Gun tells the true-life story of stick-up artist Forrest Tucker, a man for whom the description career criminal seems uncharitably understated. Tucker began a life in larceny in his teens and could never bring himself to give it up. His first escape from incarceration came when he was 15 years old, and he managed the feat on 17 further occasions. A sprightly, Wes Anderson-evoking montage recounts his many methods of absconsion, from the traditional nail filing of the cell bars to a rather more inventive exit via a kayak.

That highlights reel aside, the film largely sidesteps the “punishment” portion of Tucker’s life and instead focuses on the “crime”. We first encounter him in early 60s Texas, where during a getaway from a bank heist he encounters widowed ranch-owner Jewel, played by Sissy Spacek. Initially using her merely as a prop in his getaway, Tucker soon realises that he shares a romantic spark with Jewel, and in the years to come the pair periodically reunite whenever Tucker is “working” in the area. Jewel is wise to Tucker’s roguish disposition, but – deliberately, or not – remains ignorant of the true extent of his criminality.

When we next encounter Tucker two decades later, he has acquired a pair of accomplices, Walker (Tom Waits) and Teddy (Danny Glover). Over the course of several bank jobs, we come to learn their operation, with Teddy the getaway driver, Walker the lookout man and Tucker carrying out the robberies themselves. He does so with remarkable class, gently hinting that he has a weapon, calmly asking the teller to fill his bag with cash, before languidly exiting the building.

The trio’s exploits soon earn them the title “The Over the Hill Gang”, though in truth Redford doesn’t look any older than he did in the film’s opening scene – raising the brief possibility that he might share the same characteristics as Casey Affleck’s time-traveling spectre in A Ghost Story. Indeed, it is Affleck, as Detective John Hunt, who tasks himself with bringing the Over the Hill Gang to justice. A father of two in his 40s and struggling to adapt to comfortable domesticity, Hunt spies an opportunity for some excitement. The whole thing is as much a game for him as it is for Tucker, and the pair make for genial foes.

Indeed, there’s little hint of any genuine threat in this gentle, ambling film. Nor too, is there much moralising about Tucker’s behaviour. His crimes are, it seems, as close to victimless as you can get: he never draws a gun and the individuals he sticks up barely have a bad word to say about the “gentleman” who just threatened their lives. It’s only an encounter with Tucker’s daughter from an earlier marriage (played by Elisabeth Moss), who has never met her father and wants nothing to do with him, that indicates he may have left a trail of pain in his wake.

Lowery’s film makes sure that the audience never strays too far in their affection for Tucker – and by extension Redford. From the desaturated-seeming film stock to the script’s screwball patter, every possible accommodation has been made to ensure that this could easily slot into Redford’s cinematography right next to The Sting. Only the characterful crags of its star’s face give the game away.

The Old Man and the Gun feels strangely like a homage to the person starring in it, and some might question what such a faithful reconstruction of 1970s film adds to our current cinematic climate. At the same time it would require a true curmudgeon to not derive pleasure from that twinkling performance from Redford, radiating smoothness, wisdom and charm to the very end.