Going in Style (2017)

This feel good fantasy comedy probably does more harm than good. 

As in Martin Brest’s 1979 original (which starred George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg),  here three desperate, down-at-the-heels seniors — Alan Arkin, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman — try to escape penury and their end-of-life humiliation by robbing a bank.

Spoiler alert: Despite their age, incompetence, inexperience, they pull it off. 

In fact the happy ending really piles it on. Their heist nets over $2million, but the film doesn’t stop with that good fortune. It rather constructs a tower of them.

Willie saves his life by getting a kidney transplant (from longtime room-mate Albert. Albert has an affair with, then marries, the zaftig Annie (Ann-Margaret). Joe saves his home from dispossession, provides for his daughter and grand-daughter and also converts his delinquent ex-son-in-law to assume the obligations and pleasures of fatherhood. 

Completing the joy, the lads’ steady waitress is tipped with a wad big enough to choke a rhino and lands a man at least to dance with. The other resurrected old-timer Milton (a shrunken Christopher Lloyd) is allowed to sail blissfully on in harmless dementia. Fun and games all round. 

Reality? Who cares. In the post-truth, alternative facts, world of Trumpery it’s better to laugh at our daily tragedies than to try to amend them.   

Two flirtations with disaster turn into even more joy. What seems like Albert’s funeral turns into his wedding. The cops’ last chance to bust our heroic trio is thwarted when the little black girl recognizes Willie from his wristwatch — with a portrait of his grand-daughter — but with the wisdom of Solomon helps him beat the rap. At its blackest, this film is only a tease.

Indeed, so much happiness, all those satisfying conclusions, ruin the film. Both versions are rooted in the serious predicament American seniors face, with increasing debility and dramatically diminishing health and financial support in the decaying American culture. As Joe observes, “These banks practically destroyed this country. They crushed a lot of people's dreams, and nothing ever happened to them. We three old guys, we hit a bank. We get away with it, we retire in dignity. Worst comes to the worst, we get caught, we get a bed, three meals a day, and better health care than we got now.”

American seniors have probably never faced such a bleak and hopeless situation as Trump’s budget reductions are inflicting upon them. But after the initial plot situation the film leaves that compelling social problem to wallow in magical happy resolution. This film doesn’t address the social situation in a serious way that would make it significant but slides away into fantasy. 

If the men go in style, the film goes without any substance. It provides no realistic means to address the social issue that is its raison d’etre. It does its audience and its culture a disservice by turning a national tragedy into a bunch of laughs and a resolution achieved by magic but not by any usable strategy. It prefers to numb the pain rather than to cure it.  

In fact, this film bears out Russian director Sergei Eisenstein’s distinction between Russian and American films. American films, he observed some 80 years ago (!), give their heroes a happy ending through some unrealistic, magical twist of plot. Russian films provide a realistic demonstration of how to work to achieve that satisfaction. The Americans are satisfied with escapism.
     Poverty-stricken senior citizens in America can’t hope to save themselves through crime. Unless, of course, they’re in the White House. So what are they to do? And what might we do to honour our elderly (a principle articulated by the boys’ heist-instructor)? Serious questions, never more pertinent and urgent than under Trump’s regime. But this film laughs them away.