Going in Style

Three old men share an apartment. Their days pass on a park bench, their pensions do not stretch, and nobody calls them. One day Joe proposes an idea: rob a bank. If they are caught they will go to prison, which is a roof and meals of a sort. They do it in masks, with real guns. The subject is not the robbery but boredom and invisibility rather than money. The men do not want to be rich; they want something to happen. The section after the robbery therefore stops being comedy, and the film grows markedly heavier in its second half. The form is calm and unshowy. The robbery is not built as suspense; the camera simply records how slowly the men move, and the strangeness of the scene comes from that. It is Martin Brest's first studio film; he became known in later years for Beverly Hills Cop and Midnight Run. George Burns was in his eighties at the time, and Lee Strasberg was known as an acting teacher who rarely appeared in front of a camera. Art Carney plays the third man. It was remade in 2017. Who it is for: viewers who like late-seventies character comedy and honest films about old age. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a light heist comedy; the second half is genuinely sad.