The Old Man and the Gun review: the film exists as a platform for Robert Redford to take a final bow on screen

Almost half a century after Redford became a star playing an outlaw in ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid‘, he is still toting a revolver and robbing banks

Dir: David Lowery; Starring: Robert Redford, Casey Affleck, Sissy Spacek, Danny Glover, Tom Waits, Tika Sumpter, John David Washington. Cert 12A, 93 mins.

Robert Redford has said The Old Man and the Gun will be his final film as an actor. If so, it is a fitting way for him to step down. Redford became a star playing an outlaw in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Almost half a century later, he is still toting a revolver and robbing banks.

His acting bow is an adaptation of a New Yorker article by David Grann. Its main character is Forrest Tucker (Redford), an ageing career criminal who leads a group of thieves nicknamed by the media the “over the hill gang”. The film may be “mostly” based on a true story, but it portrays its OAP hoodlums in a sentimental light. They are nothing like the elderly and very unpleasant petty gangsters played by Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent et al in recent British movie, King Of Thieves – about the Hatton Garden robbery. Redford in particular is a perfect gentleman. “Very polite” and “seemed like a nice fella” are the ways in which his bank cashier and manager victims tend to describe him.

In most heist movies filmmakers tend to crank up the tension. Here, writer-director David Lowery does everything he can to strain it out. In keeping with the advanced age of the protagonists, the robberies are conducted in very leisurely fashion. Tucker’s accomplices – nicely played by Danny Glover and Tom Waits – are always complaining about aching bones and bemoaning their lack of youthful energy. The jazzy, elegiac music adds to the laidback nature of the film. Crepuscular lighting frequently reminds us these are characters in the twilight of their lives. They are also consummate professionals. After a lifetime of crime they know more about how to commit robberies successfully than the cops do about how to catch them. Forrest, in particular, is meticulous in the way he cases out joints. He’ll spend hours or even days preparing for a job, and will only strike when it feels right. He is also unusually dapper, as careful with his clothes and appearance as with his preparation for each crime.

It doesn’t take long to realise this isn’t really a heist movie at all. It’s an existential drama about a man who refuses to accept the passing of time. The film never bothers explaining what Tucker does with the money he steals. Getting rich isn’t the point. Robbing is his life. If he gave up on it, nothing would make sense for him. It keeps him young in spirit. He’s an inscrutable figure whose real feelings are hard to read. We are not even sure whether he shows impeccable manners during robberies because he really cares about his victims – or because experience has taught him being polite is the most effective way to get what he wants. Nor is it clear whether he has ever used the gun he keeps in the glove compartment, and which he flashes during robberies to intimidate bank staff.

Redford gives a graceful and ultimately very poignant performance. In spite of his wrinkles, he retains some of that golden boy aura that characterised him as a movie star in his pomp. He is understated and gallant in his dealings with the widow, Jewel (Sissy Spacek), who becomes his romantic interest. Jewel lives in the countryside with her horses. She seems to offer a chance of redemption. However, “the pistol packing grandpa” doesn’t feel any guilt about his life of crime and isn’t inclined to go straight, even for her.

Casey Affleck co-stars as John Hunt, a police officer who happened to be in a bank that Tucker was robbing and who starts to investigate him. With his sideburns he may resemble a Seventies TV detective, but there is little of Starsky or Hutch about him. He doesn’t jump into cars or body slam baddies. Instead, in his painstaking way, he tries to work out the methodology of the elderly criminal and understand his motivations.

The Old Man and the Gun is closer to fable than to real life. It doesn’t want to look too closely at its robber protagonist in case it exposes him as the scheming, damaged near psychopath he may be. Instead it shows him as a loveable old rogue. Tales of his many ingenious prison breaks of old add to his mystique.

Above all, the film exists as a platform for Redford to take a final bow on screen. His scenes with Spacek in particular are beautifully played and have just enough bite and irony to avoid slipping into mushy nostalgia. It’s refreshing, too, to see him in his final role playing a character with a devilry and sense of mischief about him, rather than an earnest do-gooder preaching to us from the Utah mountain tops.