AMSTERDAM : Tuesday 11th October 2022

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'AMSTERDAM' earlier this week, and this mystery comedy film set in the early 1930's is Written, Directed and Co-Produced by David O. Russell whose previous feature film making credits include 'Three Kings' in 1999, 'I Heart Huckabees' in 2004, 'The Fighter' in 2010, 'Silver Linings Playbook' in 2012, 'American Hustle' in 2013 and 'Joy' in 2015. This film saw its World Premier showcasing in New York City on 18th September and was released in the US and here in Australia last week week, having cost US$80M to produce, has so far recouped just US$12M and has garnered mixed critical reviews. 

In 1918, Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) is sent at the insistence of his very well connected and very well to do estranged wife's parents to fight in World War I. While stationed in France, Burt meets and becomes good friends with African-American soldier Harold Woodsman (John David Washington), both under the command of affable General Bill Meekins (Ed Bagley Jnr.) After they sustain severe and multiple shrapnel injuries in battle, including Burt's loss of an eye, the pair are nursed back to health by Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie), an outgoing nurse, whom they form a close bond with also.

When Burt and Harold have sufficiently recovered from their wounds, the three move to Amsterdam, where they live together and become close friends spending their time living life to the full, until Burt announces his return to New York City to be with his wife Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough). Harold, who has fallen in love with Valerie and she with him, also leaves to return to New York City and fulfill his own aspirations, but before he leaves Valerie leaves him unexpectedly leaving just a hand written note bidding him farewell. 

Fast forward to New York City in 1933 and Burt has opened his own medical practice catering to injured veterans of the war and still remains firm friends with Harold, who is now a lawyer, while they have not heard from Valerie since they left Amsterdam some fifteen years previously. Harold asks Burt to perform a post-mortem on Bill Meekins, now a senator who served as the commander of their regiment during the war, at the urgent request of Meekins' daughter Elizabeth (Taylor Swift), who believes that he was murdered. Burt performs the post-mortem aided by nurse Irma St. Clair (Zoe Saldana). The post-mortem reveals that Meekins stomach contained an unusual amount of a grey liquid indicating a mercury laced poison leading them to conclude that this must have been the cause of death. Burt and Harold meet with Elizabeth to talk about the post-mortem results, but she is suddenly killed when a hitman pushes her under the wheels of an oncoming car. The hitman frames Burt and Harold for her death during the ensuing melee, while they flee the scene on foot as the Police arrive.

In an attempt to clear their names Burt and Harold try to determine who had led Elizabeth to hire them. This leads them to wealthy textile heir Tom Voze (Rami Malek) and his antagonising wife Libby (Anya Taylor-Joy). At the Voze residence they reunite with Valerie, and learn that she is Tom's sister and was the one who convinced Elizabeth to hire them, knowing that ultimately they could be trusted. Valerie is now under constant supervision by Tom and Libby, who claim that she suffers from vertigo, a nerve disease and various other ailments though the medications Tom and Libby urge her to take every day could just be the real issue. Tom suggests to Burt and Harold that they should talk to Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro), a famous and decorated veteran who now advocates for WWI veteran's rights and was close friends with Meekins.

Burt's initial attempts to contact Dillenbeck fail, and meanwhile Harold and Valerie spend the day at her home, where they notice the hitman, Tarim Milfax (Timothy Olyphant) maintaining a watchful on their movements. They follow him to a forced sterilisation clinic owned by a mysterious organisation known as the 'Council of Five'. After a fight with Milfax, Harold and Valerie catch-up once more with Burt. Valerie takes them to New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel where they meet Paul Canterbury (Mike Myers) an MI6 spy, maker of glass eyes and an ornithologist and Henry Norcross (Michael Shannon) a US Naval Intelligence Officer, maker of glass eyes, ornithologist and partner of Canterbury - Valerie's benefactors from Amsterdam who are secretly spies masquerading under their other guises. Paul and Henry explain that the Council of Five are planning to overthrow the American government and that Dillenbeck can help them foil their plot.

The three finally are granted a meeting with Dillenbeck having got past his gatekeeper wife, and who is offered US$40K from a fat middle aged man on behalf of an unnamed benefactor to deliver a speech rallying veterans to forcibly remove President Franklin D. Roosevelt from the White House and install Dillenbeck as a puppet dictator in his place. Dillenbeck agrees and plans to speak at a reunion gala that Burt and Harold are hosting, in order to draw out whoever is behind the plot.

At the reunion event, Dillenbeck instead makes his own speech instead of the one he was paid to say. Milfax, from the rafters directly above the stage has intentions to shoot Dillenbeck for going against the plan, but Harold and Valerie spot him and are able to thwart him in time. Milfax is arrested, while the Council of Five are revealed to be four industry leaders, including Tom, who are fanatically obsessed with Benito Mussolini, Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler and have designs on making America a fascist state, with Dillenbeck becoming the fifth member of the secretive cabal, or so they had thought.

Tom and the other leaders are arrested by Police, but are quickly released as such people in high places often were, and so they in turn slander Dillenbeck in the press following their release. Dillenbeck testifies about the incident to Congress and returns home to live out his life. Harold and Valerie leave the country since they cannot be together in the United States aided by a slow boat out of New York organised quickly by Canterbury and Norcross, but not bound for Amsterdam as it will soon enough be overrun with the Gestapo exclaims Norcross, to which Valerie nonchalantly responds with 'who are they?' Burt wishes them farewell and plans to reopen his medical practice and pursue a relationship with Irma, finally coming out of the shadow of his estranged wife and his over bearing in-laws.

I have to say that I am somewhat surprised by the critical drubbing that 'Amsterdam' has received, because I, and the two movie buddies I went with to see this film, enjoyed this latest quirky comedy thriller supported by an ensemble of fine A-list acting talent. The trio of Bale, Washington and Robbie share a screen presence that is a pleasure to watch and between them they rarely miss a beat, delivering their quips, comedic one liners and sight gags with aplomb, and look as though they're having a great time doing it too. The production values and cinematography are also top notch, and whilst the story line zigs and zags, ducks and weaves, it is nonetheless a work of fiction with a modicum of a true story woven into the at times meandering narrative, but it works and all comes together nicely in the end. This may not be David O. Russell's greatest ever work, but as a story of the power of friendship and love; remembering those that exist on the fringes of our society; and thwarting the enemy at the gates, this is an entertaining enough period romp that merits the price of your movie ticket. 

'Amsterdam' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

BECKETT : Monday 16th August 2021

With Greater Sydney still in COVID lockdown, and as a result all cinema's closed until 28th August at least now, I've been reviewing over the last few weeks some the latest feature films released recently onto Netflix. One such film that I watched from the comfort of my own home this week is the action thriller 'BECKETT' Written and Directed by the Italian filmmaker Ferdinando Cito Filomarino in only his second feature film outing following the biographical drama film 'Antonia' in 2015, although he did serve as Second Unit Director on 'A Bigger Splash' in 2015, 'Call Me by Your Name' in 2017 and 'Suspiria' in 2018. Each of these three films incidentally were Directed by Luca Guadagnino who also Co-Produces on 'Beckett'. This film saw its World Premier screening at the Locarno Film Festival on 4th August and was released onto Netflix on 13th of this month, and has so far generated mixed or average Reviews. 

We are first introduced to Beckett (John David Washington), and his girlfriend April (Alicia Vikander) in bed in an Athens hotel room. From the discussions they had a fight the night before but have since 'kissed' and made up. April draws a tiny love heart with a Sharpie on Beckett's palm. They intend to leave Athens due to a political rally set to take place in the square overlooked by their hotel room, which it is reported is going to be big, noisy and could potentially turn violent. We then see the happy couple enjoying some of the sights and scenes that ancient Greece has to be offer. While driving to their hotel later that night, with April dozing in the passenger seat, Beckett falls asleep at the wheel and sends their car crashing over an embankment and down into a nearby house. The car comes to rest on its roof, with Beckett dangling upside down restrained by his seat belt, while April was flung through the windscreen not wearing a belt. As Beckett is coming to his senses, hanging upside down and peering through the shattered windscreen, he sees a red-headed child hurried out of the room by a woman. He clambers out of the car and sees that April is lying dead on the ground having suffered a serious head wound. 

Sometime later he wakes up in a hospital room with his arm in plaster. Later while being questioned by the Police, he is told that it was lucky the house was abandoned and empty. He tells the English-speaking, Police Officer Xenakis (Panos Koronis) that the house was occupied and that he saw a red-headed boy. After leaving the Police Station he walks the four kilometres to the scene of the accident with the intention of killing himself by ingesting April's bottle of sleeping pills. Having taken one, and just about to swallow the remaining contents, a blonde woman (Lena Kitsopoulou) stood outside the building starts shooting at him. Hiding behind a bush, Xenakis appears and calls out to him, saying there has been a mistake, to come out and that he'll be safe. As soon as he raises himself, the blonde woman shoots him in the upper arm. He makes a dash for it as both the woman, and Xenakis shoot at him and give chase. He jumps off the edge of a cliff into a tree some distance below, lands roughly on the rock strewn ground and makes his getaway. 

Beckett that night takes refuge in an old abandoned wreck of a truck and is awakened by hunters the next morning. Beckett needs access to a phone and so one of the older huntsmen takes Beckett to his house to attend to his wound. While recounting his story, there is suddenly a knock at the door. The old hunter goes to the door and Xenakis and the blonde woman force their way in attacking and beating the old man. Beckett jumps out of a rear upper window and escapes. He comes across a couple of beekeepers who lend him a phone. He calls the US embassy in Athens, and explains his situation. They tell him they can come to get him the next day, and so Beckett tells them he will come to them instead because it will be quicker. Athens is about a five hour car journey away, so he cadges a lift on a school field trip bus to take him to the nearest train station. Boarding the train and taking a window seat, he fails to notice Xenakis walk past the window and board his carriage. When Xenakis tries to detain him, Beckett pulls on the train’s emergency brake and in the ensuing struggle, Xenakis shoots himself in the foot and Beckett again flees the scene.

In town, Beckett notices numerous posters being pasted to walls of the red-headed boy being put up by two female activists, an American Lena (Vicky Krieps) and a Greek woman Eleni (Maria Votti). They tell Beckett that the boy is the kidnapped son of a liberal politician who has been held by a far-right organisation, called Sunrise. They conceal Beckett in the trunk of their car and drive him to Athens, during which time he tells them his story, to which Lena is more trusting that Eleni. Beckett leaves the car to avoid a Police roadblock and having arrived in Athens takes a train to get closer to the US Embassy. While trying to avoid the Police at the subway station, he is attacked by a man with a knife and slashed across the forearm. Beckett manages to escape across the rail tracks and is helped directly to the embassy by two young men. After having his wounds dressed and a change of clothes, he meets with Tynan (Boyd Holbrook) who tells him that they located April's body and that they have had it shipped there. He is then taken to the morgue to view her body, and further told that the Embassy have called her parents to break the news of their daughter's death. 

Tynan offers to take Beckett to an honest local cop to sort things out so that he can be extradited back to the US. At first Beckett is reluctant to leave the safe harbour of the Embassy, but is convinced to go by Tynan. They drive down various side roads and into a dodgy looking neighbourhood and into a quiet lot where is parked a number of trucks. Slowing down Tynan pulls out his taser and tries to zap Beckett. Beckett instead was able to turn the taser on Tynan and escape after the car crashes into the back of a truck. 

Beckett goes to where the activists told him they were headed, under the 'clasped hands' to try and warn them. Tynan has by now shaken off the effect of the taser stun and arrives with the Police and chases Beckett into the political rally. As violence mounts and clashes with riot Police unfold, shots ring out and Beckett runs into the basement of small shopping precinct. There he is confronted by Tynan, armed with a gun, who tells him the liberal politician has just be shot and killed, that his case of being the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time is now moot and he's free to get on a plane back to the US. Becket fights him, gains the upper hand and knocks him out. 

Tynan goes back up the streets where the riot is in full swing and spots the blonde woman who shot him. He follows her to a parking garage, where she meets up with Xenakis, on the top floor. Before they can escape, Beckett shoots the cop in the hand and forcibly drags the blonde woman out of the car window. He is shot at close range in his side, but he still manages to bash her head against the concrete knocking her out. By now Xenakis has driven off making an exit out of the car park, with the muffled sound of someone banging on the roof of the car boot from the inside. Lena arrives having chased after Beckett chasing down the blonde woman. As Xenakis car exits the parking garage, Beckett launches himself onto the car from the top of the parking lot, landing squarely on the windscreen. He wrestles with Xenakis who drives the car into another coming to an abrupt halt. He knocks out Xenakis, as Lena arrives and passers by pull the boy from the boot. Beckett is being consoled by Lena as he looks down at his palm at the now faded heart April drew on his hand, saying mournfully how he should have died.

Watching Beckett survive a horrific car crash, get shot twice, stabbed, punched, kicked, hurl himself off a cliff top, and, off the roof of a multi-storey car park onto a moving car below, run, run and then keep running, and evade being captured more times than I can recall all amounts to just how much beating can a man withstand in a 24 hour period, and still come out on top? This guys is on an emotional and physical roller coaster that knows no bounds and stretches the credibility to the very limit. The political machinations of the film are underdeveloped, we know very little of Beckett's back story and so its hard to feel invested in the characters or the plot for that matter. Put simply, it's a man-on-the-run thriller that fails to elevate itself above the many other similar films in the same genre, and when the action comes it's all too pedestrian.

'Beckett' warrants two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

TENET : Tuesday 1st September 2020.

'TENET' which I saw this week is an M Rated much hyped eagerly awaited spy drama film Directed, Written and Co-Produced by Christopher Nolan, who I'm sure needs no further introduction, other than his film Directing credits have amassed global Box Office returns of about US$4.7B and he has won 137 awards and been nominated 228 other times, so I guess he must be doing something right! Originally slated for a 17th July release, this was subsequently pushed back because of COVID-19 to 31st July, then 12th August and saw its release in seventy countries from last week, before its release in the US and China this week. Costing somewhere in the region of US$220M to make, the film has garnered mostly favourable Reviews from Critics, and has so far recouped US$54M. Riffing off James Bond with exotic locations, extravagant action set pieces, international espionage, a Russian bad guy hell bent on bringing about the end of the world as we know it, and the good guys working for a covert secret outfit this is sure to please . . . if you can get your head around the premise.

The film opens up with all guns blazing setting the scene for the action set pieces to follow. A CIA Agent takes part in an undercover SWAT mission at the Kyiv National Opera in the Ukraine, where he rescues an exposed spy and recovers a strange artefact, but not before members of the performing orchestra are shot and killed and the entire audience is put to sleep with gas. Another masked soldier with a red tag on his back pack rescues the Agent from being shot, but at this point it remains unclear as to their identities. The Agent (John David Washington) comes around tied to a chair on a railway line with a colleague also bound, with a bunch of nasty looking henchmen counting down the time until a train comes hurtling down the tracks to kill them both.

The Agent swallows a cyanide capsule, bur he later wakes to be told that the capsule was fake, his colleagues are all dead, and congratulations, he passed the test - no others before him have got that far. The Agent's superior, Victor (Martin Donovan) tells him that one word 'Tenet' will open doors for him, but to be wary because other doors will be slammed in his face with potentially life threatening consequences, and he is to use several markers to begin his journey.

His journey eventually leads him to Laura (Clemence Poesy), a scientist studying bullets and other retrieved artefacts whose make up has been 'inverted' so that they move backwards through time, demonstrated when the Agent catches the bullet in the chamber of the gun, rather than discharging it. Studying the make up of the bullets, the Agent traces the bullets to Priya (Dimple Kapadia), an arms trafficker living in Mumbai, and also affiliated to Tenet.

Now simply going by the handle of the Protagonist, The Agent is supported by a local named Neil (Robert Pattinson) and they both successfully infiltrate Priya's heavily guarded high rise home, by reverse bungee jumping up the tower, and learn that the bullets are supplied by Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) a Russian Oligarch who is able to communicate with the future. The Protagonist meets with Sator's estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), an art auctioneer. He learns that Sator is blackmailing her over a forged Goya painting that she sold him for US$10M, but he discovered her ruse and threatened to hand her over to the authorities if she doesn't comply with his wishes, and at the same time keeping her at arms length from her beloved young son. Kat comments that the last time the couple were truly happy together was on board his super yacht in Vietnam, from which she saw a mystery woman dive when she was leaving on a motor tender with her son.

The Protagonist and Neil work with fixer Mahir (Himesh Patel) to steal the fake Goya painting from the Freeport storage facility (a tax free haven used by investors to secretly store their art works that is heavily fortified, securely guarded and tightly controlled) at Oslo Airport, by crashing a cargo jet into the adjoining hangar as a diversion. By doing so Sator would no longer have a hold over Kat, and she would effectively be free. Inside the facility, they locate a machine from which two masked men emerge, one of which is inverted. After unmasking the normal one, Neil stops the Protagonist from killing the inverted one. Priya later explains that the machine was a 'Turnstile', a time inversion device developed in the future, and that the two masked men were in fact the same person.

The Protagonist subsequently tells Kat that the painting was destroyed in the resultant fire at the Freeport, and she arranges a meeting with Sator who reveals that he had the painting moved before the crash. Sator by now is on to the Protagonist and has him captured, and threatens to kill him. However, the Protagonist mentions the events at the Ukranian Opera, at which Sator has a change of heart - for now. Kat attempts to drown Sator during a boat race but the Protagonist jumps in and saves him. Sator now feels indebted to the Protagonist and so the Protagonist offers to steal a case of plutonium that Sator desires in exchange for Kat's freedom.

The Protagonist and Neil steal the plutonium in an intricately planned and executed highway heist from an armoured convoy in Estonia, but realise upon opening the carry case that it is in fact another artefact. An inverted Sator captures both the Protagonist and Kat, and shoots her with an inverted bullet, forcing him to reveal where the artefact is. A team of Tenet operatives led by Ives (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) frees the Protagonist forcing Sator to flee. To save Kat's life (for being shot by an inverted bullet is far more deadly that being shot by a conventional bullet), the Protagonist and Neil take her through Sator's Turnstile. They travel back to the Oslo Freeport crash the previous week to un-invert themselves inside the Turnstile there. As they re-infiltrate the airport, the inverted Protagonist fights his non-inverted self, before reaching the Turnstile and un-inverting himself.

Travelling back to Mumbai, Priya explains the artefacts (of which there are nine in total) are parts of a future-developed 'Algorithm' capable of catastrophically inverting the entire world, and that future humans are using Sator to activate it in order to prevent the effects of global warming. Kat advises that Sator is dying from inoperable pancreatic cancer. They conclude that he aims to trigger the Algorithm through suicide and through a dead man's switch, believing the world should die when he does. Kat has suspicions that Sator will choose to die on that day on his yacht in Vietnam when they were last at their happiest together.

Kat inverts back in time to delay Sator's death, while Tenet tracks the assembled Algorithm to an abandoned Soviet closed city and commences a 'temporal pincer movement', meaning that half of their troops move forward in time to the blast zone (the red team led by the Protagonist and Ives), while the other half moves backwards (the blue team led by Neil and Wheeler (Fiona Dourif)). The Protagonist and Ives are prevented from reaching the Algorithm stored underground by a locked gate, until an inverted masked corpse with a red tag on its rucksack springs to life, saving the Protagonist from a gunshot and unlocking the gate. The pair fight with a henchmen, who is intent on sending the assembled component parts of the Algorithm into a chasm below and detonating it, but is prevented from doing so with a bullet to the head. Neil driving an armed vehicle above ground drops a line down into the hole in the ground directly above where the pair are located. Clinging on the assembled Algorithm device they are winched up by Neil, just as the ground below them explodes. 

Meanwhile Kat has lured Sator into a false sense of well being and security on board his yacht in Vietnam. She shoots Sator in the chest and then drops him off the side of the yacht from an upper deck as he tumbles end over end crashing against the side of the boat before landing face down in the sea. Kat then dives from the yacht's deck, where she is witnessed by her past self. Kat calls the Protagonist to let him know that she shot and killed her husband prematurely, hoping that they rescued the Algorithm in time, to which he responds with a yes. The Protagonist, Neil and Ives break up the Algorithm's component into three equal sections each vowing to store them away secretly and without the knowledge of anyone else. The Protagonist notices a familiar red tag on Neil's rucksack, and asks him how he came to be recruited by Tenet. Neil reveals that a future version of the Protagonist recruited him to Tenet years earlier, and this mission is the end of a long friendship that the Protagonist has yet to experience. Neil and Ives depart in a helicopter, leaving the Protagonist on the ground.

Sometime later, and in London, Priya attempts to kill Kat while she is picking her son up from school, but is killed by the Protagonist in the passenger seat of the car where she sat.

I liked 'Tenet' a lot, and this is one film that you need to watch on the big cinema screen where you can immerse yourself in the never before seen stunning visuals, the action set pieces, the surround sound while trying to get your head around the meaning of the inversion of time, that is the core of this films premise. Here Christopher Nolan, who allegedly spent the past two decades or so mulling over the story and his Screenplay, has crafted perhaps his most ambitiously bold and audacious film yet; the lead characters all do a fine job with particular nods to John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki and Kenneth Branagh in perhaps his most evil and villainous role yet. The physics of inversion aren't fully explained and as Clemence Poesy's character Laura explains 'don't try to understand it, feel it', you'll leave the cinema having been wowed by the sheer size and spectacle this film offers up, but scratching your head trying to grapple with the science behind it. This epic film is supposedly going to re-establish the movie going experience in a Post-COVID world, and in this respect Nolan has delivered a wildly entertaining thrill ride of a movie that deserves all the success it can muster, and repeat viewings to understand it.

'TENET' meets four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THE OLD MAN & THE GUN : Tuesday 20th November 2018.

'THE OLD MAN & THE GUN' which I saw at my local independent picture house earlier this week is an American crime comedy film which is reported to be Robert Redford's final film as an Actor before he hangs up his hat for good and retires on a career that has spanned six decades both in front and behind the camera. Written for the screen and Directed by David Lowery, this film is based on the life of Forrest Tucker who died in 2004 at the age of 83 and spent his entire life from the age of fifteen in and out of prison as a career criminal. The script is based on David Grann's 2003 article in The New Yorker titled 'The Old Man and the Gun', which was later collected in Grann's 2010 book 'The Devil and Sherlock Holmes'. Having had its World Premier screening at the Telluride Film Festival in late August this year, the film went on general release in the US in late September and has so far grossed US$11M and has received generally positive Press.

We are first introduced to Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford) who is fleeing the scene of a crime in broad daylight in his big American sedan car of the early '70's, pursued by Police cars giving chase with lights flashing and sirens blaring. It is late 1981, and as Tucker successfully evades the Police he enters the freeway, and before long pulls his car to a halt on the side of the road to assist a woman stranded with the bonnet up. Just as he has his head under the bonnet rendering really no assistance at all, the Police cars stream by, and keep on going. Before you know it, that woman is sat beside Tucker in his car as he has offered her a ride to get to where she needs to go, while her pick-up truck gets towed for repairs. That woman is Jewel (Sissy Spacek), and straight away you can see the chemistry working between the pair.

At first Jewel is just a little wary of Tucker, but she soon swarms to his charms as they sit and chat over coffee and pie in a diner, for which she picks up the tab as a thank-you for him coming to her rescue. She goes on to tell him that her husband died a few years back, and now she lives alone on a ranch and maintains three horses. In return he tells her what he does for a living, originally stating that he was in sales, but then in a round about way and tongue in cheek tells her that he robs banks and is actually pretty good at it. Needless to say she doesn't believe him, and he also doesn't reveal his real name.

We then move to a string of bank robberies that takes us from Texas, to Oklahoma and Missouri. Tucker is the prefect gentleman thief always walking into his target bank impeccably dressed in suit and tie, in broad daylight, usually when it is busy, usually wearing a fake moustache and a hat, and asks for the manager on the pretext of wanting to take out a business loan. It is at this point that Tucker reveals from under his overcoat that he is carrying a gun, although we never see him pull it, use it in anger, or even if it is loaded. But, all of his gentlemanly charm, thoughtfully chosen words and empathy wins over the manager or the teller who time after time are obliging with filling up Tuckers brief case with cash. His victims when being subsequently questioned by the Police all say that he was so charming, so friendly, so courteous, polite and kind.

After a while, this string of gentleman robberies comes to the attention of Police Officer John Hunt (Casey Affleck), a loving family man and husband to Maureen (Tika Sumpter), who is standing in the very bank waiting to be served while Tucker is robbing it, and didn't notice a thing until the alarm was raised after Tucker had fled the scene of the crime. Hunt becomes obsessed with Tuckers crime spree and is determined to bring his newly dubbed 'Over the Hill Gang' to justice, but has very little to go on except for some grainy CCTV footage (remembering that this is 1981 tech. being relied upon), and some artist impressions pulled from newspaper articles. Hunt goes on the TV news after one such robbery stating that he is on the case and is determined to bring the Gang to justice. Tucker sees the news feed as it is broadcast, and at the scene of his next robbery involving a more daring heist on a larger bank in St. Louis leaves a message for Hunt hand written on a dollar bill.

Aiding and abetting Tucker are too long term and ageing collaborators Teddy (Danny Glover) and Waller (Tom Waits). Teddy is the getaway car driver and Waller keeps look out, and they share their spoils equally between them. In between the audacious albeit very politely and efficiently conducted heists, the story continues to develop with the emotional unfolding of Tucker and Jewel's relationship, and Hunt's pursuit of the criminals.

One early evening while Tucker and Jewel are back at the diner finishing up with an order of pie, in walks Hunt and his wife Maureen for a bite to eat. Tucker instantly recognises Hunt from his television broadcast, and instead of getting outta there, sidles up to the off-duty Police Officer in the washroom and strikes up a conversation about being correctly attired while straightening Hunt's tie. Recognising Tucker from the artist impressions, upon leaving Hunt calls out 'Forrest', to which the old man turns and smiles before exiting.

Needless to say its not long before the long arm of the law catches up with Tucker, but not before the ageing gentleman thief has given the Police a run for their money. Culminating with Tucker completing one of his Bucket List wishes - to ride a horse, he ends up at Jewels ranch early one morning, and sat astride his trusted steed sees a Police convoy descend upon her property. He is promptly arrested for his spate of robberies, as is Teddy, but Waller is still at large.

We fast forward a few months and Jewel visits Tucker in prison. It is here that Tucker reveals his true life history and his previous sixteen successful attempts at breaking out of the institutions in which he has been incarcerated over his life so far from a young teenager up to his most recent breakout from St. Quentin. He has dutifully written them all down in terms of date approximations and the institutions, which are all recreated in a short clips montage, up until escape #17 which remains blank. Jewel says that he is not going to break out of the prison in which he now sits, but will serve his time. And that he does, and upon his release a few years later she is waiting for him.

Tucker moves into the ranch with Jewel. We see them going about their business, relaxing together and enjoying each others company. But we know that Forrest has an itch that he's dying to scratch, and one day while Jewel is dozing on the couch, Forrest takes his leave to run into town on an errand. But really, he walks into a bank and holds it up, with another four conducted that very same day. After all, robbing banks is in his blood, its what he loves and he's pretty damn good at it too.

'The Old Man & The Gun' is a slow meandering leisurely paced entertaining film that feels as though it was shot in the era in which it is set, in the early '80's. It is a fitting end to a long and illustrious career of the 82 year old Robert Redford whose career began in television in 1960, and who has had a distinguished career both in front of, and behind, the camera ever since. His career really took off with his portrayal of the thief and outlaw 'The Sundance Kid' in 1969's 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' opposite Paul Newman, and how appropriate that is should close with his portrayal of thief and outlaw Forrest Tucker almost fifty years later. There is a lot to like about this warm hearted tale of obsession for ones chosen career path (even if it does involve robbing banks) and breaking out of prison on multiple occasions, finding love in the twilight of your years, and even in the way that the Detective on the case grows to find an admiration and an appreciation for his quarry. With a strong supporting casts that also takes in Elisabeth Moss, John David Washington and Keith Carradine, this is an engaging easy watch film that shows us that Redford still has that winning smile and a twinkle in his eye that has made him an icon of the industry, and in which his star still shines brightly.

'The Old Man & The Gun' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard, out of a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-