A comedy that doesn't age well

Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin are all wonderful actors, but they're not miracle workers. They can't save Going in Style.

Three aging friends who are trying to scrape by on Social Security organize a bank robbery. That was the premise of a 1979 movie called Going in Style, which starred George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg. Writing about that movie in the Chicago Reader, critic Dave Kehr said the movie, which was directed by Martin Brest, "imposes a quiet, attentive style on the story, saving it from cuteness and emotional facility. There are laughs, but the prevalent tone is one of discreet compassion, without condescension or sanctimony."

Leap ahead to 2017, and you'll find another movie entitled Going in Style, which has the same basic premise, but which stars Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin. Sadly, Kehr's quote isn't applicable to this new comedy, which has little to say about aging and hardly draws blood with its stab at social relevance. Our aging and embittered protagonists consider robbing a bank because the company for which they worked for many years has dissolved their pensions.

It shouldn't need saying, but I'll say it anyway. Freeman, Caine, and Arkin are all worthy of much admiration, and they do their best to keep this leaky ship afloat. They're all watchable, but the material with which they're working proves neither funny nor poignant.

Caine portrays Joe, a retired factory worker who lives with his daughter and granddaughter in Brooklyn. After falling behind on house payments, Joe's on the verge of losing his home. Freeman's Willie and Arkin's Albert are roommates who share an apartment across the street from Joe's house. They, too, worked at the factory and will fall into dire straits when their pension checks stop.

To further complicate matters, Willie needs a kidney transplant because dialysis no longer is doing the job for him.

Director Zach Braff, working from a script by Theodore Melfi, who re-worked the Edward Cannon story on which the 1979 movie was based, takes us through a variety of stock situations, including a ludicrous (but not funny) warm-up robbery in which the three men enter a local convenience store to try their hands at shoplifting.

Recognizing their incompetence at larceny, Caine's Joe consults with his former son-in-law as he searches for a consultant to help plan a bank robbery. The trio commits to stealing only enough to cover their pensions. Any additional monies will be given to charity.

Enter Jesus (John Ortiz), a pet-store owner who instructs the would-be felons in the intricacies of bank robbery, which he regards as an art.

Additional support comes from Anne-Margret, as an older woman who's interested in Arkin's character, from Matt Dillon as an FBI agent, and from Christopher Lloyd in the thankless role of a demented senior who belongs to the same neighborhood club as the movie's three main characters. If nothing else, Lloyd demonstrates what you might expect, senility is no laughing matter.

Braff, still best known for his work on TV's Scrubs, has directed before (Wish I Was Here and Garden State), but his touch here is far from deft.

Because the movie's stars all qualify as treasures of the cinema, the best approach to Going in Style might be simply to sigh with disappointment and move on.

Magical? Not really. Funny? Often

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone conjures up laughs.
Silly, sloppy and totally lacking in trenchancy, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone has something richer comedies often lack -- a decent supply of laughs.

Steve Carell joins forces with Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey, Alan Arkin and James Gandolfini for a comedy about a couple of fading magicians (Carell and Buscemi) who have overstayed their welcome as Las Vegas headliners.
In their prime, Burt Wonderstone (Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Buscemi) were good enough to have a hotel theater named for them, but they've stagnated: Their act hasn't changed in years.

The movie opens with a nice little prologue in which two geeky elementary school kids form an alliance built around magic. It all starts when young Burt is given a magic set for his birthday. Rance Holloway's Magic Kit transforms his life, stimulating him to learn a variety of rudimentary tricks. He thinks magic will enhance his popularity.

Burt and Anton grow up to conquer Las Vegas, where they work for a hotel owned by Gandolfini's Doug Munny, whose name signals his undisguised capacity for greed.

Director Don Scardino (of 30 Rock fame) may not be the greatest of stylists, but what he lacks in visual chops, he makes up for by giving the movie an affable and sometimes dippy spirit.

The story's principal development involves the introduction of another magician, Carrey's Steve Gray. Gray, who becomes an instant rival for Burt and Anton, doesn't exactly do magic tricks. Rather than creating illusions, he puts himself through a series of physical tortures -- like spending a night screaming on a hot bed of coals. He's his own reality show.

The complex illusions cooked up by Burt and Anton seem passe when compared to Gray's death-defying stunts, which -- the movie suggests -- are precisely what a thrill-hungry public craves.

A bewigged Carrey -- he looks a little like Fabio on a bad day -- brings his customary intensity to the role of a crazed performer; it's a one-note performance, but the note is so strikingly manic, it almost sustains itself for the entire movie.

The script may be trying to for a bit of satirical edge with Carrey's character, but members of the pretension police can relax: No one's likely to accuse The Incredible Burt Wonderstone of trying to make any kind of statement.

Carell begins the movie as a self-absorbed, womanizing egoist with long hair, the biggest bed in Vegas, a tan that looks as if it came out of a bottle and an act so transparently showy, it borders on self-parody. Carell smartly tones down his performance as the movie progresses, bringing a little normalcy (and a better haircut) to his portrayal. He also picks up a love interest (Olivia Wilde) along the way.

Buscemi mostly plays second fiddle to Carell as the beleaguered Anton. Not surprisingly, the partnership between Burt and Anton becomes increasingly shaky, slipping into its final collapse with a disastrous trick called "The Hot Box." Eager to compete with Gray, the two suspend themselves in a class cage and wait for the Vegas sun to fry their brains.

Once he's on his own, Burt's career founders. He's eventually reduced to working assisted living facilities. At one such facility, he meets the aging Rance, who long ago abandoned his career as a magician. Burt and Rance develop a friendship that helps revive both their spirits.

It hardly needs to be said that Arkin fulfills his comic obligations with sarcasm, rue and what -- in this movie -- passes for wisdom.

The movie doesn't do much with other supporting characters. Jay Mohr (as the wonderfully named Rick the Implausible) adds little, to cite one example.

Of course, the movie builds toward the inevitable reunion and resurgence of the Wonderstone/Marvelton act, arriving at its destination in awkward but funny fashion.

It's possible that The Incredible Burt Wonderstone will become little more than a footnote in the careers of a lot of talented folks, but it's an amusing footnote -- and that counts for something.

Major actors, minor movie

No movie starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin can be all bad -- and Stand Up Guys isn't.

Putting Christopher Walken, Al Pacino and Alan Arkin into the same movie raises a large amount of justifiable expectation. None of these veterans have worked together before, and it's reasonable to assume that the cumulative weight of their old-pro experience will deliver the big-screen goods.

Unfortunately, Stand Up Guys -- the story of aging mobsters forced to come to grips with their mortality -- only partially lives up to the promise suggested by its powerhouse cast.

As directed by Fisher Stevens, from a script by Noah Haidle, Stand Up Guys finds its best moments in the relationship between Pacino and Walken, as a couple of bottom-feeding hoods who inhabit the lower echelons of the criminal subculture.

Walken's Doc, who spends most of his time painting pictures of sunrises, refers to himself as a "retired" man. He lives in a modest apartment. His hell-raising days appear to be done. He's proud of the fact that he has cable. Hey, at a certain point, you take your pleasures where you find them.

A low-key drama begins when Pacino's Val (short for Valentine) is released from a 28-year stretch in prison. Val's the movie's most "stand-up" guy because he served his time without ratting out any of his cronies.

Walken's Doc meets Val upon his release. The two hug awkwardly, and the movie proceeds to chart the next 24 or so hours in the lives of these aging felons.

Looking to party after his long prison stint, Val visits a local brothel, only to discover that he's unable to function sexually. Doc proposes a Viagra solution -- which leads the two to break into a pharmacy.

Val has his "party," but even that has its downside. Having consumed too much Viagra, Val winds up at a hospital, where we meet a nurse (Julianna Margulies), who happens to be the daughter of another of their old partners in crime, a getaway driver named Hirsch.(Yes, the script definitely could have done without another joke about a guy whose erection lasts more than four hours.)

Hirsch, we learn, is languishing in a nursing home where he's suffering from emphysema.

To add some proverbial insult to the injury of age-related decline, a vicious mob boss known as Claphands (Mark Margolis)wants Val assassinated. The screenplay eventually gets around to telling us why Val has become a target, while making room for Val and Doc to rescue Arkin's Hirsch from the nursing home where he's pretty much relegated to sitting in his room.

Arkin's Hirsch gets an opportunity to ply his trade as the trio races from the cops and lands in a variety of other jams, not the least of which involves a naked woman (Vanessa Ferlito) they discover in the trunk of the car they've stolen. They become the woman's self-appointed protectors.

They also visit Doc's favorite restaurant where they're waited on by Doc's favorite waitress (Addison Timlin).

I wouldn't say that either Walken or Pacino is in peak form, but they work work well enough together -- with Walken playing the more restrained of the former hoodlums. Walken and Pacino keep the movie watchable, even though the story -- punctuated with well-selected '70s R&B -- doesn't generate much tension.

If you're inclined to think about what might have been accomplished with this kind of cast, Stand Up Guys may prove disappointing. If you're willing to settle for watching Pacino and Walken enact a bromance for seniors, you may be entertained enough to stave off regret. I was.

A few words with Fisher Stevens

Talk about a dream cast. To make Stand Up Guys, Fisher Stevens was able to cast Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin in principal roles. Each of them plays an aging gangster at a point in life when mortality no longer seems like a distant threat. In an on-line chat with critics, the 49-year-old Stevens, who has acted in more than 85 projects and who has directed three features, talked about his movie, which is just now opening around the country.

Q: Were there any differences in how you approached the job of directing Pacino and Walken??
Stevens: Before we started shooting, I knew Al much better than Chris. I spent a bit more time going over the script at the beginning with him, so I felt more at ease directing Al at first. With Chris, I had to feel my way around at the beginning. But they both welcomed direction. Sometimes they would disagree with me, but ultimately, they would always try one take the way I wanted it.

Q: How difficult was it for you to get Walken and Pacino to agree to the roles each plays? Pacino's Val, a guy who just has been released from jail, is a bit more of a loose cannon than Walken's Doc, an aging gangster who seems to have done a better job coming to grips with his age.

Stevens: When I started the movie, Al and Chris told me that they had done a reading a few years earlier of a different version of the script. Al played Doc, Chris Played Val. When I called Chris to say I was directing the film, he expressed interest in playing Doc. He said that as he gets older, he enjoys playing grandfathers.
I went in a round-about way to try and get someone to play opposite Chris, not going to my friend Al Pacino, because I was told he wasn’t interested. I kept striking out until my phone rang one day. It was Al calling me after he had seen a Woody Allen documentary I had executive produced. He asked me to work on a documentary with him. I said, 'No, I want you to read Stand Up Guys again and consider being in it with me directing.' There was a long pause, and Al said, 'You’re directing?' I said, 'Yeah.' He read the screenplay, and said, 'Of course.' Four weeks later we were in pre-production.

Q: How did you decide on who would play Hirsch, the former crony and getaway driver who Doc and Val rescue from an old-age home?
Fisher: The first person I thought of for Hirsch was Alan Arkin. I had worked with him in the film Four Days in September 20 years ago. I guess because Chris and Al were already attached to the film, it peaked Arkin’s interest. Thank God he said yes. It was like a dream come true.

Q: Stand Up Guys is set in the present, but has the feel of an older film. What, if any, films were primary inspirations for Stand Up Guys?
Fisher: Many films from the 1970s including Dog Day Afternoon, Five Easy Pieces, Straight Time, and The Dirty Dozen. I loved the films of the '70s because they were about characters and not so much about big plot points and big set pieces. I made sure there were no cell phones, no computers, nothing very modern in Stand Up Guys except for the car that Pacino steals. Most of the clothes were vintage. The colors were muted. It was like time had forgotten this town and these people.

Q. Can you say a bit more about your approach to material that's both comic and serious?
Fisher: It was important to ground this entire script in reality. That was the only way for it to work. We rehearsed and had long discussions about keeping everything real, even when it comes to hyper-blown situations. Fortunately, I had the greatest actors in the world to work with, and they only know how to do things real. When it felt false, we did another take...It was incredible fun. Sometimes I would get lost just watching them act, and forget I was directing. It was also a lot of work, but I would gladly do it again.

'Argo,' one of the year's best

An entertaining new thriller from Ben Affleck tells a far-fetched but true story.

The new thriller Argo -- impressively directed by Ben Affleck -- brims with fakery, much of it deadly serious.

Affleck perfectly blends a near-satirical take on Hollywood hucksterism with a pulse-pounding thriller about the rescue of six Americans who were hiding in the Canadian ambassador's home in Tehran after the 1979 start of the Iran hostage crisis.

Argo revolves around a plan so bizarre, it almost requires extra suspension of disbelief. But wait. That's not entirely true. Though enhanced for entertainment purposes, Argot tells a true story.

In it, Tony Mendez (Affleck), a skilled CIA agent, poses as a Canadian money man to cook up a scheme in which he'll fake the making of a major Hollywood movie. Mendez will then enter Iran, claiming that he's on a location-scouting mission.

The fake movie -- called Argo -- supposedly requires arid backdrops for its Star Wars-like story. It's also supposed to serve as a cover for the escaping hostages, who'll pretend they're part of the movie's crew.

Lacking any other ideas for rescuing the six Americans, the CIA adopts what it considers "the best bad idea" available.

Skillfully using real footage throughout, Affleck begins with a quick prologue tracing the rise and fall of the Shah and his replacement by Ayatollah Khomeini. This refresher course sets the table for a movie that spans improbable psychic distances: from Washington to Hollywood to Istanbul to Tehran.

Affleck brings frightening power to the moment when Iranian throngs overrun the U.S. embassy, allowing us to experience what it might be like to find ourselves in the midst of a hostile crowd fueled by its idea of righteous anger. The storming of the embassy is as harrowing as some of the Hollywood scenes are amusing.

For the record, the mob held 52 Americans hostage in the trampled U.S. embassy while the six Americans on which the movie focuses made their way to the Canadian ambassador's home.

Affleck receives whip=smart support from John Goodman, as savvy Hollywood make-up artist John Chambers, a specialist in prosthetics, and from Alan Arkin, as the cynical producer of the fake film.

If there's any justice, Arkin's performance as Lester Siegel will earn him an Oscar nomination in the supporting actor category. Is there anyone better at making a wisecrack sound like the unassailable voice of experience?

The movie's other stand-out performance belongs to Bryan Cranston, Mendez's boss at the CIA, a Washington-based agent who must fight his way through various obstacles to provide Mendez with the back-up he needs to make his crazy plan work.

Chris Terrio's screenplay recognizes that people under extreme duress often try to cover their stress with humor. When Siegel says he wants a credible script, he reinforces the point by insisting that if he's going to make a fake movie, it damn well better be a fake hit.

The Hollywood scenes are entirely justified because the success of Mendez's scheme depends on establishing the aura of a credible production. The assumption is that the Iranians will check to see whether Argo qualifies as the real deal. It costs the CIA $15,000 to option the Argo script, which has been languishing in turn-around.

I don't know how much liberty the screenplay takes with real events, but Affleck wisely engineers the movie for maximum suspense, tightening the screws of tension as he goes.

The only performance that gave me any pause was Affleck's. Bearded and sporting 70s length hair, Affleck tends toward unmodulated seriousness. Maybe it makes sense: As the movie's director, he probably didn't want to dominate a story that has lots of moving parts.

I don't think there's false note in Argo until an ending that has Mendez reuniting with his estranged wife. Perhaps Affleck felt the movie needed an epilogue to balance with the prologue that began it.

But considering how much has been accomplished prior to that, why quibble? Argo reminds us of what we should expect from a lot more mainstream movies: terrific stories told with insight and style.

Moves on the art-house circuit

CHICO & RITA TAKES AIM AT ADULTS

Chico & Rita. Directors Fernando Trueba and artist Javier Mariscal take a lingering, discursive look at the bumpy love affair between a jazz pianist and a singer in this Oscar-nominated animated feature. The movie begins with the pianist -- old and wandering through the mists of memory -- thinking about how he met Rita in Havana during the jazzy latter days of Batista's regime. The story takes Chico and Rita from Havana to New York, Paris and Las Vegas as they try to sustain musical careers and fan the flames of an affair that meets with its share of obstacles, some of them caused by Chico's roving eye. The movie's music takes precedence over the animation, which tends to flatten out faces, and an improbable ending puts a smiley face on a sometimes edgy story. Still, the main virtue of Chico & Rita is that it's aimed entirely at adults, which means it makes room for Rita's voluptuous carnality and includes an animated sex scene. I don't take this as a sign that adult-oriented animation has a real future, but one always can hope.

NORWEGIAN WOOD, IT'S NOT ALWAYS SO GOOD

As a lover of director Tran Anh Hung's The Scent of Green Papaya, I found myself hoping I'd be equally transported by Norwegian Wood, Tran's big-screen adaptation of a popular 1987 Japanese novel by Haruki Murakami. Tran serves up some of the year's best and most memorable imagery, but tells a story that's never fully involving. The tale springs from the suicide in the 1960s of an adolescent whose death haunts the lives of two friends. Watanabe (Ken'ichi Matsuyama) leaves his village home to become a college student in Tokyo, but remains detached from the student turmoil that surrounds him. Eventually, Watanabe re-connects with the beautiful Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi), who was the girlfriend of the boy who killed himself. Watanabe and Naoka establish a relationship, but she ultimately winds up languishing in a mental institution, tormented by the unfulfilled sexual relationship she had with the boy who committed suicide. Another student (Kiko Mizuhara) -- the sexually aggressive Midori -- also establishes a relationship with Wantanabe. The elements of a fine movie are in place, but Norwegian Wood misses the mark, something in the manner of an arrow that hits the target and falls gently to the ground. Notable, though, are the brilliant work of cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin and the musical score of Jonny Greenwood.

WAIT, HAVEN'T WE BEEB DOWN THIS ROAD BEFORE?

It's not possible for me totally to resist a performance by Alan Arkin, so I was happy enough watching Thin Ice, a bit of neo-noir set during the middle of winter in Wisconsin, where (as one character) puts it, there are two seasons: winter and road work. Director Jill Sprecher tells the story of an unscrupulous insurance agent (Greg Kinnear) who's trying to persuade a aging and somewhat addled client (Arkin) to give him a valuable violin. Of course, Arkin's Gorvy, who lives in a house strewn with bric-a-brac and clutter, doesn't know the instrument has any real value, at least not at first. The plot thickens appropriately as Sprecher makes room for appearances by Bob Balaban (as an appraiser of violins), David Harbour (as an ultra-sincere insurance agent who works for Kinnear's Micky), and Billy Crudup (as a workman who installs security alarms). Crudup gives a strange and lively performance as a man who becomes mired in criminal activity, and Kinnear does his best to hold the story together as an increasingly desperate man. The trouble with Thin Ice: If you've seen enough of these neo-noir, con-game stories, you'll peep the movie's hole card long before you should. This is not a case where familiarity breeds contempt, but it sure as hell takes off some of the edge.