I guess that "Stand Up Guys" is intended to be Al Pacino and Christopher Walken's version of "The Bucket List," since apparently every aging male movie star is required to have one before wrapping up his career. And true to the body of work of these two seminal actors, this outing takes the form of a crime comedy/drama, in which they portray geriatric gangsters, one (Walken) retired and the other (Pacino) just paroled after 28 years in the slammer (I use the word "slammer" intentionally in an attempt to capture at least some of the anachronistic flavor of this throwback to a bygone era of gangster-movie melodrama). It turns out that Walken has only been allowed to live all these years on the condition that he whack Pacino for killing the only son of an equally decrepit mob boss played by Mark Margolis.
The humor in Noah Haidle's screenplay consists mainly of jokes about the men's various ailments (with a special emphasis on impotence) and medications. When they're not trying to procure Viagra, they're lamenting the good old days, banging hookers, or going off on little escapades like breaking their buddy (Alan Arkin) out of a retirement home for some just-for-old-times-sake "tough guy" fun-and-games on the road.
Directed by Fisher Stevens, the movie feels as wheezy and creaky as the characters it's depicting. The whole thing is based on the premise that there's nothing quite so amusing or heartwarming as watching an assortment of septuagenarians behaving as if they were still in their 20s. The result is patronizing and condescending to both the actors and the members of the audience regardless of their ages.
There's also a sequence at a cemetery (with a hapless Julianna Margulies bearing witness to it) that's a strong contender for Least Plausible Scene of the Year Award.
As to the performers themselves, Walken's effective underplaying is not sufficient to counteract Pacino's nonstop scenery-chewing.
And while it's nice to see actors of a certain age getting movie roles these days, does it really have to be in a vehicle of roughly the same vintage?
The humor in Noah Haidle's screenplay consists mainly of jokes about the men's various ailments (with a special emphasis on impotence) and medications. When they're not trying to procure Viagra, they're lamenting the good old days, banging hookers, or going off on little escapades like breaking their buddy (Alan Arkin) out of a retirement home for some just-for-old-times-sake "tough guy" fun-and-games on the road.
Directed by Fisher Stevens, the movie feels as wheezy and creaky as the characters it's depicting. The whole thing is based on the premise that there's nothing quite so amusing or heartwarming as watching an assortment of septuagenarians behaving as if they were still in their 20s. The result is patronizing and condescending to both the actors and the members of the audience regardless of their ages.
There's also a sequence at a cemetery (with a hapless Julianna Margulies bearing witness to it) that's a strong contender for Least Plausible Scene of the Year Award.
As to the performers themselves, Walken's effective underplaying is not sufficient to counteract Pacino's nonstop scenery-chewing.
And while it's nice to see actors of a certain age getting movie roles these days, does it really have to be in a vehicle of roughly the same vintage?