The Old Man & the Gun

Writer-director David Lowery, adapting the New Yorker article by David Grann, tells the true story of Forrest Tucker, the career criminal who spent half his life in prison and the other half escaping and robbing banks with courtly panache. Casting Robert Redford as Tucker carries unavoidable echoes of his Sundance Kid, and Redford embraces those echoes with understated enthusiasm. The whole movie has a loose-limbed, shambling, unpretentious charm, not unlike the matter-of-fact bemusement of Grann’s original New Yorker piece. Adding professional heft to the supporting cast are Sissy Spacek as his unsuspecting sweetheart (a fictional compilation of various women), Casey Affleck as pursuing detective John Hunt (real name and all) and Danny Glover and Tom Waits as members of Tucker’s “Over-the-Hill Gang.”