The Old Man and the Gun: Quite a pistol!

The Old Man and the Gun (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

Right from the start, we’re obviously in the hands of a savvy filmmaker.

It’s not merely the grace and charismatic star wattage with which Robert Redford strolls into the opening scene, although writer/director David Lowery deserves credit for stepping back and letting the 82-year-old actor — his blue eyes still sparkling with charm — carry the moment with the on-screen magnetism that has made him a Hollywood icon for more than half a century.

Having successfully eluded police pursuit after robbing a bank, Forrest Tucker (Robert
Redford) furthers his camouflage as "just a guy" by stopping to help a stranded
motorist (Sissy Spacek).

No, it’s what happens next, when Redford’s Forrest Tucker — having just robbed a bank with the calm, congenial politeness of somebody purchasing a movie theater ticket — hops into his getaway car. Cinematographer Joe Anderson tracks the vehicle as it crisply takes a few corners. Ambient sounds are accompanied by our eavesdropping on police scanner chatter, as all officers are alerted to be on the lookout for a white sedan.

Tucker’s car heads toward the camera, then turns left (our right) and vanishes into some sort of alleyway. Anderson, positioned at the foreground of this city block, slowly pans along the cross-street, momentarily focusing on two children playing. In the background, we hear the sounds of a car stopping, the door opening and closing as somebody exits, a pause, and then another car door opening and closing, and the sound of a different engine roaring into life.

Anderson’s camera slides along and reaches the hard-packed dirt of a vacant lot — all of this having been one continuous shot — just as Tucker bursts onto the street, now driving a fresh vehicle.

Absolutely brilliant use of the cinematic medium.

I settled back, knowing we were in for a treat. Lowery doesn’t disappoint.

The Old Man and the Gun is a mildly — but only mildly — romanticized dramedy based on the audacious life of Forrest Tucker, a career criminal first arrested for car theft in Stuart, Florida, in 1936. He was 15 years old. Over a span of decades that found him in prison as often as out, he ultimately developed a method enhanced by his advancing age, and rehearsed with the care and precision of a Royal Shakespearean actor.

Frightened tellers nonetheless commented on the old guy’s almost apologetic deference, and the fact that he smiled with such equanimity. They practically wanted to help him rob their bank. It was early 1980, and the George Burns/Art Carney crime dramedy Going in Style still was playing in movie theaters. As a result, when police officers in Texas and Oklahoma compared notes regarding a series of similar bank hold-ups, the as-yet-unidentified Tucker was dubbed head of “The Over-the-Hill Gang.”

(Actually, The Over-the-Hill Gang is an occasionally charming 1969 Walter Brennan Western. But I digress.)

Clearly, Tucker’s life was made for the movies. I’m surprised it took so long.

High on 'Get Low'

Get Low (2010) • View trailer for Get Low
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and too harshly, for brief profanity, fleeting violence and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.27.10
Buy DVD: Get Low • Buy Music CD: Get Low

On June 26, 1938, shortly before the Great Depression yielded to the WWII years, a Tennessee hermit named Felix "Bush" Breazeale — having lived for years with no company but his beloved mule — threw himself a "funeral party" that lured upwards of 12,000 'mourners' from at least 14 different states. 

The event probably wouldn't draw more than raised eyebrows today, but at that more innocent time it was regarded as highly eccentric; the 'service' was covered by Life magazine and reporters from numerous papers. 

In an effort to make Felix Breazeale (Robert Duvall, seated) more
presentable, funeral home owner Frank Quinn (Bill Murray, right) and
his assistant, Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black), take the grizzled hermit
to a barber, and then to a clothing store. Felix is perfectly content to
go along with all this, since Frank is picking up the tab.

"I just wanted to hear," Breazeale took the Roane County Banner, "what the preacher had to say about me while I am alive." 

Breazeale enjoyed his newfound celebrity for another five years before dying on Feb. 9, 1943, this time being laid to rest during an intimate church service that drew few onlookers on a cold winter's day. 

Nobody really knows what prompted his desire for that first mammoth affair; it may have been just a whim. 

Questions that tantalizing were made to be answered by imaginative writers. 

Chris Provenzano, a veteran scripter of provocative TV shows such as Mad Men and Justified, shaped his take on Breazeale's saga with co-writer Scott Seeke; Provenzano then fine-tuned the subsequent script with C. Gaby Mitchell. The result is Get Low, an engaging little character drama deftly directed by Aaron Schneider, which gives memorably quirky roles to Robert Duvall and Bill Murray, with solid support from Sissy Spacek, Lucas Black and Bill Cobbs. 

The film capably lives up to the iconic line in 1962's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." 

Duvall has no shortage of unusual character parts in his past; he thrives on them. But familiarity certainly doesn't breed contempt, as Duvall's never quite the same way twice. His take on Breazeale is deceptive: The mostly silent backwoods man who initially appears unsophisticated proves to be shrewd, cunning and intelligent.