The Old Man & the Gun pairs two legends
Apologies to Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, but in the totally make-believe contest for Most Swoon-Worthy Cinematic Couple of 2018, they can only be a distant second. That’s because we, as a society, had the privilege of seeing Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek in The Old Man & the Gun.
Okay, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that The Old Man & the Gun exists. David Lowery’s heist flick, based on a 2003 New Yorker article, was released way back in August, which at this point might as well be a lifetime ago. It’s also intentionally lightweight, a genial, low-stakes caper that, with the exception of one scene featuring Elisabeth Moss in a subtly devastating cameo, displays no qualms about bolstering its hero’s larger-than-life status.
Whenever Redford and Spacek appear together, however, the sun-dappled landscapes and jazzy soundtrack acquire an extra zest. Their characters meet at the beginning, when Forrest pauses in his latest getaway to help Jewel with car trouble. He lets slip with a twinkle in his eye that he’s a bank robber; she refuses to believe him. It’s a somewhat absurd dynamic, but you go along with it because it’s Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek. You don’t even need to follow or care about the dialogue because the way they look at each other as they say it is electrifying, their gazes filled with the gentle intimacy of two people who know the world well enough to be comfortable in it.
Thankfully, Lowery senses the electricity too. He lets them talk at length, usually about nothing in particular, as if reluctant to move on to a future where movies that let their actors talk at length about nothing in particular are like unicorns. We wouldn’t have it any other way.