Stand up Guys

Ends tonight, March 14. Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin in a geezer gangster comedy. Brash humor and a giddy impulsiveness give it unexpected charm. Noah Haidle’s script, his first for a feature-length film, feels like an amalgam of Goodfellas, Grumpy Old Men, The Bucket List and whatever aging gunfighter movies you’d care to name. Nevertheless, the comic lines he’s written for Pacino and company have a pleasing wallop to them, and director Fisher Stevens does a brisk and skillful job of ushering the cast through the story’s rambunctious zigzags between half-serious action and rowdy farce. Pacino is a scruffy delight. Walken has fewer laugh lines, but he’s superb as a guy who listens and thinks a lot and doesn’t have to say much to get his point, comic or not, across. Pageant Theatre. Rated R.