The Old Man & The Gun starring Robert Redford: Ready to fall in love again?

Robert Redford stars in The Old Man & the Gun

You can take this with a pinch of salt because of my lifelong devotion to Robert Redford but this trailer for The Old Man & the Gun made me think Redford shouldn’t retire from acting after all. When I heard this film would be his last onscreen, I thought to myself: that’s fine, I don’t blame you. He has made a tremendous contribution to the world of film behind the scenes while onscreen, his line delivery has always taken me a minute because it's so flat, so underdone. Not unlike, perhaps, the way most of us talk, without high drama. But watching this trailer, I'm seeing something different. Like he settled into himself and finally got his old guy groove on. Then there’s the chemistry he and Sissy Spacek rock which frankly, makes me fall in love with this old geezer all over again.

Robert Redford & Sissy Spacek in The Old Man & the Gun

The Old Man & the Gun is based on the true story of Forrest Tucker, an old man—with a gun—who spent his life robbing banks and getting tossed back in jail. David Grann the author of The Lost City of Z, and the upcoming Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio project Killers of the Flower Moon wrote an article about the seventy-eight-year-old robber in The New Yorker in 2003. Redford read the article and held onto the idea of bringing it to the screen for a decade, finally hiring David Lowery to both write and direct the film based on the piece.

I don’t know if this is Redford’s onscreen swan song but if it is, I'm hearing it’s a tender, career high of a goodbye. Also starring Sissy Spacek, Casey Affleck—as the good guy out to get him—Danny Glover, Tom Waits and Tika Sumpter (Raina in Gossip Girl) The Old Man & the Gun, screening this week at TIFF, comes out in the US on September 28th. It hits the London Film Festival on October 28th.

Watch the trailer and tell me what you think. Cuz, me? I’m loving it.