Going in Style

Going in Style (2017) is about three old men who decide to rob a bank after their pensions are cancelled in a corporate merger. The idea is not revenge but accounting: they want back exactly what the bank took from them, and they insist on taking no more. It is a remake of the 1979 film of the same name. That was Martin Brest's first major picture, starring George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg, and it was far darker. There the robbery was not a lark but the boredom of men waiting to die. The 2017 version keeps the skeleton and changes the tone entirely into comedy. Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin lead. Zach Braff directed from a screenplay by Theodore Melfi. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: light heist comedy, watching three veteran actors together, and gentle films about old age. Less good for: there is no tension, and at no stage of the robbery does any real risk register. The bitterness of the original is gone, and anyone who knows the 1979 version will read that as a loss.