The Old Man & the Gun Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

The Old Man & the Gun Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 4, 2019

Robert Redford has won two Academy Awards in his long career, a 1981 statuette for Best Director of Ordinary People, and a special 2002 trophy honoring his work with the Sundance Film Festival. While Redford culled two more Academy Award nominations for both directing and co-producing Quiz Show, perhaps surprisingly, Redford’s performance acumen has only been recognized once by the Academy, with a Best Actor nod for The Sting. That may have been one reason that Redford was widely touted this year as a probable Best Actor candidate for The Old Man & the Gun, the film that Redford has announced will be his last as an actor, giving Academy voters one of those chances for a “career nomination”, even if they might understandably be less than enthused about the actual film and/or performance up for a nomination. Alas, Redford had to “make do” with “only” a Golden Globe nomination for his work in The Old Man & the Gun, and the film may well simply be a rather small scale elegy of sorts for an actor who helped define “new cinema” in his own very particular way.

Though he shared a name with one of Hollywood’s reliable character actors, a performer probably best remembered by Baby Boomers for his two year stint in F Troop, this film’s Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford) is a far cry from a strapping movie star. This Forrest Tucker is something of a scoundrel, a guy who’s spent much of his life in jail, and who evidently has a history of escaping from those confinements, in a plot device that plays a little like Catch Me If You Can: The Next Generation (so to speak). And in fact the “Macguffin” of this enterprise might be seen as the cat and mouse game between Forrest and a cop named John Hunt, who has made bringing Forrest and his acolytes in an almost religious mission after a rather humiliating experience with the thieves which won’t be spoiled here.

Even the bank heist(s) aspect of The Old Man & the Gun is played surprisingly low key throughout the film. This is not an enterprise built out of labyrinthine caper strategies and baroque editing techniques. Instead, The Old Man & the Gun kind of ambles along amiably, much like Forrest himself, and as such the film requires a certain amount of surrender, especially from those who may be coming to it expecting some kind of adrenaline rush. This is therefore much more a film about relationships than it really is about plot machinations, even if the threat of capture lurks in the background from virtually the first scene, with a kind of funny punchline as Forrest stops to help a woman named Jewel (Sissy Spacek) stranded by the side of a road Forrest is hightailing it down.

If The Old Man & the Gun admittedly never really goes for the gusto in any major way, it is solidly built out of a number of smaller moments that allow its principal cast, which also includes Danny Glover and Tom Waits as Forrest’s sidekicks, and Elisabeth Moss as an unexpected relative, to really shine. The film ping pongs between various characters, including Detective Hunt, even if the focus is chiefly upon Forrest for the bulk of the film. What’s so remarkable about the film is how quiet it actually is — there are long shots with little other than Forrest or other people driving or ruminating, and yet writer-director David Lowery manages to quite clearly delineate character in these moments.

It’s kind of interesting to contrast a “kinder, gentler” use of frankly elderly stars in this film with the more bombastic proclivities of entries like, say, The Expendables: 3-Film Collection . What’s so refreshing about this film is how charming it manages to be despite not offering huge plot mechanics or even overtly showy scenes for its performers (two possible exceptions are vignettes involving Spacek and Moss, which are admittedly played for their heartstring tugging abilities). But there is so much charisma and class with this fantastic cast that the entire enterprise kind of coasts along, almost magically, kind of like Forrest managing to outrun a horde of chasing police almost simply by force of will.

The Old Man & the Gun Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Old Man & the Gun is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Perhaps surprisingly given this starry cast, Lowery and cinematographer Joe Anderson opted for the decidedly non-glam look of 16mm for the feature, and as such grain can be fairly pronounced and fine detail levels a bit tamped down at times, though this transfer has a really appealingly natural and organic look for the most part. A prevalence of close-ups (sometimes extreme close-ups) helps to overcome some of the built in deficiencies of detail levels with smaller formats, and some of the views of the faces of the stars are positively topographical with the signs of aging. Grading seems to emphasize cool blues quite a bit of the time, but those choices don't materially affect detail levels to my eyes. Patterns on elements like fabrics on clothes or props like linens and bedsheets resolve without any problems. There are some probably unavoidable moments of murkiness in some nighttime or dimly lit scenes where shadow detail isn't optimal, and in a few moments grain occasionally attains a slightly chunkier quality than it reveals for most of the presentation.

The Old Man & the Gun Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Old Man & the Gun features an often intimate sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that, like the video element, is almost deliberately "old school", with nuance offered instead of bombast. The film's jazz inflected score by Daniel Hart is appropriately light and breezy, and is nicely spread around the surround channels, and some of the outdoor material does offer good placement of ambient environmental sounds (a few effects, like a rush of passing police cars, can occasionally up the sonic ante considerably). Dialogue is always rendered cleanly and clearly on this problem free track.

The Old Man & the Gun Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Everything Else We Shot (1080p; 9:10) is a kind of cheeky title for deleted scenes.


• Prison Cats (1080p; 2:53) is a frankly slightly weird piece showing felines in a prison work factory.


• On Filmmaking (1080p; 12:50) features Robert Redford and David Lowery in conversation.


• 31 Wake-Ups (1080p; 6:34) features behind the scenes footage of one of the bank sequences.


• Joining the Hunt (1080p; 3:15) briefly profiles the real life police involved in the actual case.


• Audio Commentary by David Lowery


• Gallery (1080p; 2:03) features either an Auto Advance or a Manual Advance mode. The timing is for the Auto Advance option.


• Theatrical Trailers (1080p; 4:41)

The Old Man & the Gun Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Old Man & the Gun may seem like an awfully low key way for Robert Redford to end his acting career, but the iconic screen legend has such undeniable charisma that he can pretty much do nothing on screen and still be a veritable magnet for the eyes. This is definitely small scale storytelling, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a story to be told. All of the principal cast craft believable, lived in characters here, and while arguably a little too languorous for its own good, The Old Man & the Gun is often delightful and even quite moving at times. Technical merits are first rate, and The Old Man & the Gun comes Highly recommended.