classicsoncall
Take Art Carney out of the sewer and he's a pretty good character actor. You didn't get a sense of his range as an actor while portraying Ed Norton in "The Honeymooners". Here he's joined by George Burns and Lee Strasberg as retirees trying to make ends meet as their lives hit the doldrums sitting on park benches and watching the rest of their years pass by. One thing I had to check was the ages of the three actors in the picture; Carney is actually the youngster of this group at sixty one when the film was made. Strasberg was seventy eight and Burns was eighty one with another two decades to go! Once all the shenanigans with the bank job are out of the way, the story turns poignant for Joe Harris (Burns) as he has to endure the passing of his two long time buddies. Burns as expected is wonderful in the role, though I wish director Martin Brest had made him a gentler curmudgeon in that scene with the bratty looking kid in the park. He cursed the kid out twice and that didn't seem in keeping with his character. But then again, he concocted the robbery scheme and threw caution to the wind at the gaming tables. For the sake of the story, I'll go along with the seventy grand haul in Las Vegas, but it does make you wonder if they could have pulled it off for real.Apart from the story, I did a major double take when the camera panned that cemetery that was filmed for the movie. Holy cow - it was huge! So much so that I had to look it up. Assuming it was in or close to the Astoria, Queens neighborhood the three elderly gents lived in, a search came up with the Calvary Cemetery in Astoria. It's one of the oldest cemeteries in the country, and one of the largest in terms of interments with, get this - over three million burials! It's always very cool when a movie leads me to an interesting bit of trivia like that. So now you know too.
Steve Pulaski
Joe (George Burns), Al (Art Carney), and Willie (Lee Strasberg) are three geriatrics who share an apartment together in Brooklyn and spend their days sitting on a park bench, talking aimlessly amongst themselves or just sitting in silence as they decay in public. Living off their social security checks, and not really caring what the future days bring them, Joe proposes an idea to the guys that sounds infinitely more tempting than sitting on the park bench every day. The idea is that the three men buy disguises and proceed to plan and orchestrate a bank robbery. If they get caught, with all three of them having a spotless history, their sentence won't be long and, even if it is, they get free meals and a place to live as far as they're concerned. Not to mention, upon release, they'll have several uncashed social security checks waiting for them. If they get caught, well then they're "x" amount of money richer.Joe, Al, and Willie conduct the heist and, through a couple of minor complications, still manage to make out with around $35,000, an unprecedented amount they have never even come in contact with. The three men decide to take their earnings to Las Vegas, where they could either lose it all or make it back and even double it. These are cockamamie circumstances but such are the plot lines of Martin Brest's mainstream, directorial debut Going in Style, a hilarious comedy that also packs in some seriously contemplative ideas about what age does and how the need for adrenaline in some never simmers.The people who assume that everything done by the characters in Going in Style is done "just because" are the people who are going to emerge unsatisfied and underwhelmed by the film. Those who see Joe, Al, and Willie for what they really are - goofy, free-spirited, fearless, and genial - and their motivations as practical examples of a desire to fulfill nudging temptations are those who will emerge from the film ecstatic and satisfied. I fall in the latter. After watching three great character actors perform the dialog, events, and antics of a criminally underrated writer/director, I felt that Going in Style had been depressingly overlooked by the general public and deserved not just a rewatch but an reconsideration for its themes and ideas on age.To begin with, Burns, Carney, and Strasberg are all tremendous here, with no character outshining another as they all get their moments to shine. Early scenes are key to how we get to appreciate and like these characters, as we watch them sit and stare at birds, read the daily headlines, feed pigeons, or tell rambunctious rugrats to get lost. This is age in a nutshell; something that could confine you to a park bench, a newspapers, and passing glances if you allow it to. Joe, Al, and Willie could've easily been confined to this life till they died, but because of Joe's ostensibly outlandish but, in reality, somewhat practical proposal, the three can carry out something that makes them feel like they have meaning and significance.Consider the scenes when the men plan the robbery and how they plan to handle the understandably panicked bank tellers and customers. Just the act of planning this makes them glow and gets them excited; this is the first thing they've had to look forward to in years, and with that, the men decide to conduct the heist. As haphazardly-conducted as the heist turns out to be, the three couldn't care less. They feel important, they've just done something bad, and they will live the rest of their lives (however long that may be) with the idea that they did something important. Do the crime, do the time (maybe), get the bragging rights.The film was directed by Martin Brest, who later went on to do Beverly Hills Cop, Meet Joe Black, and Midnight Run, all of which have gone on to bear more prominent reputations than the unassuming Going in Style. Brest has always been one for action comedies, but Going in Style showcases an early point in his career where he seemed fascinated by the idea that adrenaline can still be had by the most unsuspecting people doing the most unsuspecting things. Ignoring its unremarkable legacy and future, this is a hilarious film with underrated meditations on life and age that shouldn't go unnoticed.Starring: George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg. Directed by: Martin Brest.
DotelMotel
"Going In Style" is a perfect movie. It is a film that is funny as much as it is sad. It will get your heart racing with excitement and touch you with emotion. It is about loneliness, friendship, family, living, and dying. It features so many twists and turns - many unexpected - that by the end of the picture, the viewer is generally surprised at what had just occurred. And yet, at 28, director Martin Breast created a flawless gem getting three outstanding performances out his senior citizen leads (George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasburg). There are great movies and then there are those few special movies that you hold a special place in your heart for and share with others around you. "Going In Style" for me is one of those movies.
dbborroughs
Three seniors, bored with just sitting on a bench decide to rob a bank. What happens is probably a sweetened version of what might happen if it were to really happen, or would have back when this movie was made.
This is probably George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg's shining moment on film. The acting of the three leads is perfect and conveys the boredom of life before the robbery, the excitement of the robbery and the confusion of the fall out. Why aren't more movies like this being made?
This is not a comedy. Yes its funny but there is a dark side to the film concerning not only the fall out of the robbery but also what it means to be old in America.This is a low key, off beat gem of a film that hooks me every time I run across it on TV. Its wonderful and though everything doesn't go right, its uplifting in its way simply because we get to see real old people trying to get by and not Hollywood's version of them.See this movie.
