✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Cinema

The Old Man and the Gun film review ★★★★★

07 Dec 18 – 07 Dec 19, TIMES VARY

A Ghost Story director David Lowery teams up with Robert Redford for his final role in The Old Man and the Gun, the true story of gentleman criminal Forrest Tucker

By Ella Kemp on 3/12/2018

In The Old Man and the Gun, Robert Redford gets a romantic swansong
In The Old Man and the Gun, Robert Redford gets a romantic swansong
The Old Man and the Gun film review 4 The Old Man and the Gun film review Ella Kemp
15 years ago, The New Yorker told the story of Forrest Tucker as he warmly explained it from his prison cell. By this point, Tucker had broken out 18 times successfully, 12 times unsuccessfully. He was an incredibly skilled bank robber and escape artist, forever on the run and always working – he completed his last job just before turning 79. It seems fitting, then, that Robert Redford should end his phenomenal career by playing Tucker in this charming crime comedy based on his life, The Old Man & The Gun.


Over his 56 years in the film industry, Redford has come across the role of a conman before. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid launched him into the stratosphere as a charismatic criminal, and the actor was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in The Sting. But there’s something singular about how perfect Redford and Tucker are suited for each other, as both artists live the true stories that hustlers onscreen and off have been trying to replicate ever since, each new copy just seeming paler in comparison.


David Lowery directs the film with great fluidity, celebrating the enjoyment with which Tucker did his job and the effortless charm that characterises Redford’s as well. Each robbery is simple, polite and straightforward. Tucker shows the gun, but doesn’t shoot, and he makes sure to say ‘thank you’ on his way out. The optimism that characterised Lowery’s Pete’s Dragon is tangible, with a breezy integrity that is void of cynicism.



Sissy Spacek and Robert Redford brim with infectious niceness in The Old Man and the Gun


It’s very easy to love The Old Man & The Gun. There’s the excitement of the repeatedly successful heists, but not so much of the adrenaline-fuelled tension that the genre usually demands. A smooth jazz soundtrack colours the story with the easygoing elegance of a job done right, and allows Redford to fill the screen with the romantic confidence that audiences know all too well.


He’s not alone, though. Sissy Spacek counters Redford’s boyish allure as his love interest Jewel, based on Tucker’s third wife. When together, the pair beautifully embody a timelessness that celebrates life and love at any age. They talk about things they want to do and haven't done yet – not in a fatalistic way, but simply with the belief that life always has something more to enjoy. There’s no less magic in the way Forrest kisses Jewel on her doorstep, just because they have a few more wrinkles, than a traditional Hollywood romance usually reveals.


The film offers a playful retelling of one of the most surprising criminals to have lived, exploring the cat and mouse games he played with detective John Hunt (played with deft sensitivity by Casey Affleck) as well as the very simple reasons he went to such great lengths to swindle the world in the first place. ‘I’m not talking about making a living’, Tucker tells Jewel, ‘I’m just talking about living’.


The con artist got away with so much towards the end of his life because no one believed such a nice old man would be inclined, or able, to do it. ‘Violence is the first sign of an amateur’, Tucker told The New Yorker, which epitomises the gentleman's priorities. He hustles because he enjoys it, and he’s good at it – and that’s not something that fades with age. For the old-timer’s swansong, Redford wonderfully celebrates Tucker's life of crime for the joy in doing what you love. Both men prove that you’re never too far over the hill for that.




What The Old Man and the Gun film review
When 07 Dec 18 – 07 Dec 19, TIMES VARY
Price £ determined by cinemas
Website Click here for more information



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 24–26 March. Photo: The Parakeet, Kentish Town
Things to do in London this weekend: 24–26 March
Irene Maiorino and Alba Rohrwacher in My Brilliant Friend season 4, HBO/Sky Atlantic (Photo: HBO)
My Brilliant Friend, season 4, Sky Atlantic: first-look photo, release date, plot, cast
Best art exhibitions in London. Photo: Thin Air at the Beams
Top exhibitions on now in London

Editor's Picks

Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers
Based on a true story: movies and biopics coming soon
Penélope Cruz in Pain and Glory
Upcoming movies 2019: best films to watch this year
Kristin Scott Thomas in the 2018 Burberry Christmas campaign
Best Christmas ads 2018: the ultimate guide
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

Cinema

London Film Festival

Robert Redford

David Lowery

LFF 2018

You might like

  • A Ghost Story film review

    A Ghost Story film review ★★★★★

  • Michael Caine, Ray Winstone, Paul Whitehouse, Jim Broadbent, and Tom Courtenay in King of Thieves

    King of Thieves film review ★★★★★

  • Four boys, no plan, one heist - what could go right?

    American Animals film review ★★★★★

  • Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki rest up for the heist of a lifetime

    Widows film review ★★★★★

  • Shoplifters film review

    Shoplifters film review ★★★★★

  • Tim Blake Nelson, Buster Scruggs and the search for a loveable misanthrope

    The Ballad of Buster Scruggs film review ★★★★★



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×