I'd seen the trailers last year for this film starring Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek, but it was just last week when I was able to settle onto my sofa to enjoy this piece of masterful acting.
Based on aspects of a true story, Robert Redford is Forrest Tucker, an aging lifelong criminal who was arrested and imprisoned over and over, but managed to escape eighteen times. Forrest is a bank robber who works with two trusted fellow criminals (played by Danny Glover and Tom Waits). Each time he commits a robbery, he brings along and displays his gun, but is unfailingly polite. His victims say he seems like a nice guy.
He connects with Jewel (Sissy Spacek), a Texas widow, when her pickup breaks down, and he stops to assist her (although he knows little about cars), and craftily takes advantage of the moment to evade the police who are looking for him after his most recent hold-up. Jewel and Forrest gradually fall into a friendly, gently romantic, relationship but she does not know who he is or his history until well into their acquaintanceship.
Jewel has a mortgage on her large farm property and lives alone, except for her horses, and her children want her to sell and move, but she resists. Forrest secretly looks into paying off her mortgage, using some of his trove of cash, but he is not able to since the transaction can not be completed. The desire, however, is there.
A determined detective, John Hunt (Casey Affleck), is trying to find Forrest and arrest him again, and goes to great lengths, even after the FBI steps in because of the interstate nature and extent of his crimes. Hunt locates Tucker's daughter (a cameo by Elisabeth Moss), and interviews her, and the search continues. Eventually, of course, Hunt catches him, though that isn't the end of Forrest Tucker...
Throughout the film, Redford displays the incredible skill and the charm that have made him an icon of the movies over many decades. Even wrinkled, graying, and shuffling along, he is still handsome and charismatic. There is one remarkable sequence, in which we are treated to a look at a series of photographs of the young and gradually aging Forrest/Redford. This is one of the most magical moments of the film (which has many), since Redford has announced that this film is his last – he is retiring from acting.
Affleck and Spacek are also excellent. Sissy Spacek's Jewel has the perfect the down-to-Earth quality and wry humor to complement Redford's Forrest, and Affleck is appropriately intense. There are some nice moments from Glover and Waits too.
All around, the Old Man & the Gun was a delight, and makes you wish Robert Redford would keep acting forever.
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