Going in Style | Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin team up for a geriatric crime caper

Going In Style Alan Arkin Morgan Freeman Michael Caine
(Image credit: ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA)

You're never too old to get even. 

Displaying oodles of grouchy charm, veteran stars Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin team up as three very senior citizens who decide to rob a bank in Going in Style, a remake of the genial 1979 comedy starring George Burns, Lee Strasberg and Art Carney. The trio, former steel workers and lifelong pals, have been royally ripped off by the system, cheated out of their pensions by corporate shenanigans. So they resolve to get even by robbing the Brooklyn bank that has helped swindle them.

As heist movies go, Going in Style won’t set anyone’s heart racing: actor turned director Zach Braff’s pacing is too leisurely for that. Yet despite the absence of edge-of-the-seat suspense (possibly a good thing given the film’s target audience), the old codgers’ elaborate robbery (and even more elaborate alibi) does provide good-natured escapist fun. It’s good, too, to see Arkin strike up a spry rapport with Ann-Margret, still radiantly flirty at 75.

Certificate 12A. Runtime 96 mins. Director Zach Braff

Going in Style available on Digital Download; released on Blu-ray & DVD on 14 August.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcdTN5soeQw

Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.