Video review: "Going in Style"

Three old guys hard up for cash and with an axe to grind turn to a life of crime -- or, at least an outing -- and in the process discover a sense of purpose that’s been missing.

Sound familiar? And not just because “Going in Style” is a remake of a 1979 film. It turns out movies about oldsters robbing banks and such are a veritable enterprise unto themselves.

There are zero surprises to be had with this dramedy caper starring Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin. We know how everything’s going to go, 1-2-3. Part 1: Grievances. Part 2: Planning the Heist. Part 3: Things Don’t Go Exactly as Planned, But Turn Out Fine.

The main reason to watch this film is the threesome of outstanding lead actors plus a nice supporting cast. They convey a sense of lived-in warmth and contrariness that you just can’t fake without four-fifths of a century of living, or thereabouts.

Freeman plays Willie, Arkin is Albert and Caine is Joe. All three are retirees from the same steel company that’s pulling up stakes and moving overseas, dissolving their pensions in the process. Turns out their bank is complicit in the move, so they feel no qualms about robbing the place.

They’re not greedy: They just want what they’re owed, and not a penny more.

John Ortiz plays a career criminal who hooks up with the boys and walks them through the paces. Matt Dillon plays the obtuse FBI agent leading the chase. Ann-Margret is the local seventysomething hottie who casts an amorous eye at Albert.

“Going in Style” isn’t a bad movie, just an unambitious one. With three great actors like this, you could just have them read random Tweets onscreen and it’d probably be equally entertaining.

Bonus features are rather modest in scope. The DVD version contains a feature-length commentary track by director Zach Braff. Upgrade to the Blu-ray combo pack, and you add a handful of deleted scenes.

Movie:



Extras: C

Review: "Going in Style"

Movies about oldsters turning to crime, in particular robbing banks, are hardly a novel event. Between "Tough Guys," "The Crew," "The Grey Fox" and "Family Business," Geriatric Robbers is practically a genre unto itself. Heck, even Sinatra and the Pack were getting a mite long in the tooth when they made "Ocean's 11."

Indeed, "Going in Style" is a loose remake of 1979 film starring George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg that no one really remembers.

The new version features Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin. All are charming playing up their familiar persona: Freeman has a twinkly charisma and tart wisdom; Caine is peevish but warmhearted; Arkin is cantankerous and grouchy.

The plot the movie puts them through is quite tired and predictable, though. All play retirees of a steel company that's moving to Vietnam and dissolving their pensions, so they decide to get payback by robbing their own bank, which is complicit in both the pensions and trying to foreclose on one guy's house.

(I love that the screenplay, by Theodore Melfi, doesn't even bother trying to explain why a Brit has been living and working in New York City for at least 30 years but hasn't lost his Cockney accent.)

Caine is Joe, Arkin is Albert and Freeman is Willie. They're working-class guys who live across the street from each other, meet at the same coffee shop most days and are all unmarried -- whether bachelors or widowers, we know not.  Their pension checks have suddenly stopped showing up and Joe has fallen behind in his mortgage payments. When he goes to the bank, the smarmy banker (Josh Pais) blows him off. But then some bank robbers knock the place over, and as they say a seed is planted.

Willie is in the latter stages of kidney failure, and as an old guy with crappy insurance he's near the bottom of the transplant list. Arkin is Willie's longtime roomate, the kind who spends a lot of time complaining and sleeping.

Roughly the first half of the movie is the planning of the heist, with a little help from a local criminal played by John Ortiz. The second half is the actual robbery and aftermath, with Matt Dillon as the full-of-himself FBI agent investigating the case. Even dogs don't like him!

In between is a little bit of character and family stuff. Joe lives with his daughter (Maria Dizzia) and granddaughter (an irrepressible Joey King), and during the course of the heist preparation he tries to get his estranged ex-son-in-law (Peter Serafinowicz) to reeneter their lives. Willie wants to be well enough and wealthy enough to travel to see his people more than once a year. Albert finds himself pursued by Annie (Ann-Margret, still a dish at nearly 76), a grocer who shares his appreciation for cooking and jazz.

Director Zach Braff ("Garden State") milks the obvious laughs for all they're worth, such as elderly sex. Albert seems stunned to find himself in a relationship with a hot old mama. "She likes me for who I am. I don't even like me for who I am!"

And, of course, there are plenty of old jokes. "Are you guys 5-0?" asks a suspicious low-life. "We're closer to 8-0," Joe deadpans.

Christopher Lloyd -- great name, that -- shows up as Milton, the hilariously senile guy at the local seniors club. Among his foibles is using a bullhorn for most of his conversations. For him, life's a non-stop bingo game and there are always balls to be called.

Ziobhan Fallon Hogan is the sassy waitress at their diner, who we just know is destined for the world's fattest tip. Kenan Thompson plays the security chief at the Value King grocery store where the boys first practice their criminal ways; he feels professionally insulted as he reviews video of the trio stuffing hams down their pants and whatnot.

"Going in  Style" reminds me of an old test Gene Siskel used to give movies: instead of the film, would you rather just watch that same cast of actors sitting around, eating lunch and chatting with each other? I'm not sure this movie would pass.

Review: "Argo"

"Argo" is not a deep movie, but it is an extraordinarily well-crafted one. It's a political thriller in which we go in knowing the outcome, but the film continually surprises us and keeps us dancing on a razor's edge of suspense.

After "Gone Baby Gone," "The Town" and this film, director/star Ben Affleck has established himself as a serious artist behind the camera -- a weighty counterpart to the flighty star-making roles of his youth and tabloid twisting of his personal life. His direction is subtle yet impactful, touching the audience's emotions without seeming like he's trying to wow us.

Everyone knows the story of the 1979 uprising in Iran that deposed the U.S.-installed despotic shah in favor of a Muslim theocracy. The American embassy was overrun and dozens of diplomats held hostage for 444 days, being released on the day of the inauguration of Ronald Reagan (whom the Iranians feared would turn their country into a parking lot).

A largely forgotten footnote is that a half-dozen diplomats escaped the embassy and hid out in the home of the Canadian ambassador. They were smuggled out in January 1980 by the CIA, which concocted a convoluted and seemingly ludicrous cover story.

To wit: the American spies faked the commissioning of a science fiction adventure movie titled "Argo" -- such cheap knockoffs of "Star Wars" were not uncommon in those days -- even going so far as to option an existing screenplay, hire some veteran Hollywood figures as faux producers and stage a media event to announce their plan to shoot in Iran.

Then Tony Mendez (Affleck), the agency's top "exfil" man, would fly into Tehran, meet with the Iranian culture ministers, and fly out with the ambassador's "houseguests" posing as a Canadian film crew.

Even Mendez himself, a laconic sort not given to hyperbole or excessive speech, acknowledges that it's a long shot. But it beats the other plans on the table: having the diplomats ride bicycles 300 miles to the border, or pose as agricultural officials come to help the local farmers grow crops -- in the dead of winter.

"This is the best bad idea we have," Mendez' boss (Bryan Cranston) announces to the top brass.

The story segues into a fun 'n' games section, where John Goodman and Alan Arkin play showbiz old-timers who are just cynical enough about moviemaking to sign on. Goodman's character, John Chambers, was a real Oscar-winning makeup artist -- he did Spock's ears on "Star Trek" and the gorilla masks on "Planet of the Apes" -- who also helped out the CIA from time to time by disguising spies.

Arkin's character is a composite, but he gets some of the movie's best lines. "John Wayne's in the ground six months, and this is what's left of America," he snorts while watching TV footage of the American hostages.

Screenwriter Chris Terrio, adapting Mendez' book about the operation, shuttles back and forth between the action taking place in Tehran, Washington D.C. and Hollywood, building tension block by block. Especially effective is the cross-cutting between two press conferences, one in which the producers announce the production of "Argo" and the other where the revolutionaries spew vitriol, labeling all of the diplomatic staffers spies. (In fact, only three were.)

Also compelling is the painstaking reconstruction of secret documents that were shredded in the moments before the embassy fell, which are stitched together piece by piece by a small army of Iranian children and female weavers. We watch as these papers, including photographs of the missing diplomats, are slowly reconstituted, and it serves as the sands of an hourglass counting down the time they have left before discovery.

"Argo" is visually arresting, both for cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto's washed-out colors and the grooming styles of the Americans. It's a litany of Cheetos mustaches, huge owlish eyeglasses and bowl haircuts that would seem like exaggeration -- until we see photos of the actual people during the end credits and discover the resemblance is spot-on.

Everything in "Argo" fits together with clockwork precision; there is not a second of flab in its two-hour running time. The award season's first lock for a Best Picture Oscar nomination has announced itself.

3.5 stars out of four

Catching up with "Sunshine Cleaning"

"Sunshine Cleaning" is that extreme rarity in Hollywood -- a mainstream movie directed by a woman (Christine Jeffs) from a screenplay written by a woman (Megan Holley).

Neither Jeffs or Holley were involved in "Little Miss Sunshine," but the producers are the same, as the advertising campaign for "Sunshine Cleaning" is quick to remind you. There's no road trip in the new movie, but thematically the two movies are blood siblings. They're about low-middle class families with troubled children and beat-down adults who yearn for something better, particularly from their professional lives.

Both movies even share Alan Arkin as the off-kilter but heartwarming grandfather -- although he gets to live through this movie.

The main character is Rose, played by Amy Adams, a former high school queen who's now stuck cleaning the houses of the people she formerly lorded over. She's got a smart but troublesome 7-year-old (Jason Spevak) whose school wants to either put him on medication, or expel him. Her vaguely punk sister Norah (Emily Blunt, one of the few Brits who can do a near-perfect American accent) skips between waitressing jobs while living with their dad, who is retirement age but is constantly working half-baked business deals with candy popcorn and consignment shrimp.

Rose never got hitched to the captain of the football team, but she is sleeping with him -- even though he's a married cop with one kid and another on the way. He does provide her the tip that the crews who clean up the nasty remains of crime scenes get paid big bucks for wiping up blood and bits of brain.

Soon Rose and Norah are tag-teaming as they visit the gruesome scene or murders and suicides wearing hazmat suits and wielding sponges. Both see it as a business opportunity, but it becomes something more to them. Rose, who's perpetually mortified by her fall from social grace, becomes a proud business owner who revels in the slight, but intimate way they share the last moments of people's lives. And Norah rescues some photos and personal belongings of a woman who killed herself, intending to give it to her daughter, but ends up befriending her instead.

"Sunshine Cleaning" is a slow-moving affair intended for grown-ups with the patience to enjoy the way the film languidly moves between drama and comedy, pathos and silliness. The plot is not a forced journey between point A and B, but rides a current that is content to get caught in eddies, and rush over rapids as the film finds its own pace.

It does strive at times to be quirky for the sake of quirkiness -- for example, the little boy using the CB radio in his mother's work van to ask questions of the heavens, which go unanswered. These moments break away from the natural mood of the characters, forcing them to do things they probably wouldn't do.

I'm not sure if "Sunshine Cleaning" is a movie that has really figured itself out. It's got some interesting themes and the acting is uniformly splendid -- Adams in particular -- but I get the sense it was built upon a series of ideas that never quite interlock with each other. Its pieces are often wonderful, but don't combine to produce a fully-formed whole. Still, it's a movie that sophisticated film goers won't want to miss.

3 stars out of four