Stand Up Guys

I'll say it straight off--don't waste your money on this film. It's obvious the movie company already did, by having this film made. The only ones who benefit are the people they paid to make the movie. It's an easy paycheck for the three senior actors in the film, Christopher Walken, Al Pacino and Alan Arkin, and even for supporting ut established actor Juliana Margulies. Maybe it offers some exposure to its first time screenwriter but perhaps the only ones who can come out a bit above water is Lucy Punch doing what she can with her comical role, and Addison Timlin offering a bit of poignancy to a story that really doesn't do it much justice.

The basic plot concerns some old mobsters who go for one last spree in their old age. The most central character (or at least the loudest) is played by Al Pacino, Val, a con who has just been released from prison after almost 30 years, for the stray accidental murder during a shootout of the son of his mob boss. He is greeted upon release by his best friend Doc (Christopher Walken) who seems to have been the only one to have remained his friend. What Val doesn't know is that their old boss has forced Doc to kill Val in payment for his son's death. Doc of course does not want to do this.

The story takes place in about 24 hours. Val wants to do stuff like party and have sex, which he hasn't done during his time in prison, so Doc takes him to a madame (Lucy Punch) and a bar. They break out another old cohort Hirsch (Alan Arkin) from a nursing home, unknown to his daughter (Julianna Margulies), and steal a sports car where Hirsch, apparently a getaway driver or or lover of fast cars in his past life, has a fun time on a joy ride. There is a screwball subplot where in the trunk of the car is a woman whom they help get revenge on some rapists (Craig Sheffer and other no name actors) that really have nothing to do with the plot other than to show what decent guys the threesome are.

They stop now and again in a diner where the waitress Alex (Addison Timlin) works, a nice friendly girl who has a connection to Doc she doesn't know about. Throughout it all, the three men can't help but admit they are old and that any good times they had in the past, are in the past.

I'm not saying the actors were exactly phoning it in, but this was certainly a bunch of lazy performances on top of an unoriginal script; the three main actors certainly didn't stretch much in their roles, and despite Doc and Val being best friends, I didn't see heartfelt or realistic chemistry between Walken and Pacino. Even Margulies was not trying very hard. I think most of it is due to a derivative script by a first time writer (don't know how they managed getting these big name actors for such a weak script by a first-timer). We are given the slimmest of back stories to show that Val was noble in a mobster way in accepting prison for a crime he says was an accident (thus the title which serves to show the guys' decency). As with comedies with elderly men, there were jokes about sexual inadequacy, so passé but unfortunately used several times in this film. Also Pacino and Walken are allowed too much to act "like themselves" rather than taking on a character--their haircuts are their own, both a little wild I might add, as is the way they dress and their mannerisms. Here and there is a sign of what Pacino can potentially do if he had the right words to say (a bar scene where he dances with a young woman) but he doesn't try very hard and the script doesn't serve anyone well.

Although the characters of Val and Doc have some pathos, the better word is "pathetic" as to the content the actors were given to portray.