In Stand Up Guys, you get to spend 95 minutes with Christopher Walken and Al Pacino. You could do worse. Alan Arkin shows up for a fun bit of business in a highly flattering role. And it’s pretty fun.
In Stand Up Guys, you get to spend 95 minutes with Christopher Walken and Al Pacino. You could do worse. Alan Arkin shows up for a fun bit of business in a highly flattering role. And it’s pretty fun.
Al Pacino plays Valentine, a criminal who gets out of prison after 28 years, is met by his best friend, Christopher Walken, embarks on a night of ‘partying,’ then realizes that it’s Walken’s job to kill him. But Walken is not a typical thug. He’s Pacino’s best friend, and doesn’t want to kill him. But if he doesn’t kill him, then Walken will be killed by a vindictive crime boss, and Pacino will be killed anyway. This is a great film conflict.
I was privy to an interview with director Fisher Stevens, who said he loved the movies of the 70’s, like Mean Streets, where it was “all about character and not just plot and big set pieces.” This film is rooted in that gritty style. I could practically smell the coffee and cigarettes on Pacino’s breath.
This film has lots. There’s great actors, great direction, old crooks getting boner pills, and old guys getting super boners (boner spoiler alert!). There’s basically a boner sub-plot, which I wasn’t so interested in, but, to be fair, a 70-year-old gangster just got out of prison. Boners and lady parts probably are foremost on his mind.
And, that’s essentially where the idea came from. Well, not boners, exactly, but old guys. Stevens said, “The script came about because the writer, Noah, was riding his bike in Coney Island one day and saw three old gangster-type looking guys sitting on a park bench drinking coffee out of a paper cup. And he was imagining what their lives were like. And this is what he came up with.”
It’s a struggle with mortality and friendship, and the issue of how you’d spend your day if it might be your last. It’s a relatively subdued role for Pacino, for which I am grateful. I did not hear one, “Ooh-aah!” (although I did see it in his eyes).
It’s good, not great. It’s somehow released at the end of January, instead of awards season. It’s not a great make-out movie, but it is a good movie to watch with your dad. If your dad is anything like my dad – old and cranky and hates to leave the house and hasn’t been to a movie theater in decades. I’ll amend: It’s a good movie to watch with my dad.
Laura House