Michael Caine is eighty-four years old, and he looks and acts every day of it in an underwhelming comedy that is as stale as last week’s bread.
To think that he was the toast of swingin’ sixties London and the heroic, golden-haired lieutenant at the battle of Rorkes Drift – not that Morgan Freeman comes off looking much better. Out of the three old codgers who combine to rob a bank, only Alan Arkin appears to be more than a heartbeat from death’s door, and the kindest thing we can say about Ann-Margret is that maybe next time she should consult Cher’s cosmetic surgeon. Zach Braff’s sporadic career as director includes the charming Garden State (2004), so it was a surprise to see how clunky his new offering is – the scene in which the gang pinch stuff from a supermarket is embarrassingly bad. From the minute that Joe (Caine) walks lead-footed and expressionless into his bank to be told that he is overdrawn, the movie is wrapped in an octogenarian fugue.
Joe, who has miraculously not lost his Cockney accent, despite working at a steelworks for thirty years with Willie (Freeman), has also seen his and his mates’ superannuation moved offshore, so the only reasonable option for them is to pull a heist and take back from the oppressors of the working man what is rightfully theirs. But first they need to learn the ropes and tool up.
There is so much potential wasted by a dreary script and a cast happy to hit the bundy every morning for the million or so bucks they will have been paid to go through the motions. I found myself staring at those weird black freckle-things that are scattered around Freeman’s eyes and hoping for Matt Dillon, an actor with a subtly honed comic skill, to be more involved as Detective Hamer. Braff tries to jazz it up with split screen, collage and a few other tricks of the trade, but a potential gem turns out to be a Joe Cocker.