The executive is, fortuitously, left nameless and
the passage of time has proved him spectacularly wrong. But to some extent he
may have had a point. In his early TV career Redford was competing against the
last knockings of teen heartthrobs such as Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue, and
others.
Despite great early film performances in Inside Daisy Clover (1965), The Chase (1966), This Property is Condemned
(1966) and Barefoot in the Park
(1967), opposite Jane Fonda who was tarred with the distaff side of the same
brush, it was easy to dismiss him as just another attractive face in the crowd.
It wasn’t until Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) that Redford achieved
what we would now class as superstardom. Once he was in charge of his career
and his choices he put together a resume that ranks with the best of his
generation. Like his Butch Cassidy
co-star and great friend Paul Newman, Redford had to grow out of his looks and
into his talent to be taken seriously but it has been worth it.
He is one of those actors who has had the
misfortune to appear in the occasional bad movie but also the good fortune to
never himself be bad in any movie he was in. Indecent Proposal (1993) is an ideal example; it’s a terrible movie
but Redford is the one decent thing in it. Along the way he has also put
together an interesting career as a director and producer, not to mention
setting up the Sundance Institute which became the foundation of the American
indie movement in the Eighties.
All of which brings us to The Old Man & the Gun which Redford suggests may be his last
film as an actor. If it is, and I earnestly hope that it isn’t, he is leaving
us with one of his finest screen performances.
David Lowery’s film is based on the true story of
Forrest Tucker – the bank robber not the character actor. Forrest broke out of
San Quentin at the age of 70 and embarked on one of the most improbable crime
sprees in American criminal history. Using not much more than charm and a smile
– the titular gun is never fired – Forrest and his ‘gang’ (Danny Glover and Tom
Waits) cut a larcenous swathe across the American Midwest.
Forrest is a perfect Redford character. Not an
outright maverick but someone who is blessed with a gift for seeing the world
not as it is but as how he would like it to be. If Redford has an acting style
it’s one of studied curiosity; there’s a slightly pragmatic edge to his dreams.
In that sense he is perfectly cast here. This film, which he also produced, is
Redford’s contemplation of his career, just as Clint Eastwood reflected on his
in Unforgiven (1992) and Gran Torino (2008).
Lowery’s ‘mostly true story’ – a nod perhaps to Butch Cassidy’s ‘Most of what follows is
true’ – unwinds at a leisurely pace. The story is embellished slightly by the addition of a significant love interest
in the shape of Sissy Spacek’s elderly widow, Jewel.
The scenes between Redford and Spacek are utterly
charming. There are none of the facial tics or emotional indication of many
contemporary stars. Here you have two of the best in the business giving it
their all in an atmosphere of mutual respect. It doesn’t seem like acting at
all, it feels rather as though we have been allowed to eavesdrop on a
conversation. Their naturalistic underplaying makes both characters utterly
convincing and Jewel humanises Forrest for the audience to make the ending all
the more poignant.
The Old Man
& the Gun may look odd to contemporary audiences but Lowery has gone
out of his way to create an aesthetic that resembles the period in which it is set. The grain of
the film, for example, is forced to look like a Seventies movie, the camera movement is
restricted, and even the title is in the same archaic font as that of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
If this is indeed Redford’s swan song then it is a
glorious send off. But it also marks the emergence of David Lowery as a major directing
talent which redresses the balance somewhat.
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