Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster in Tough Guys (1986)-from Imdb.com
Well, it’s 3 AM and I couldn’t sleep so I watched a movie and it was an older one. Old if you consider the 80s old, that is. For some people the 80s is old, believe it or not. For me it was the 80s. I was a kid and saw lots a movies then, I was within walking distance of a movie theatre and had three, count it, THREE paper routes to finance my movie going experiences. And I went all the time. I may have seen Ernest Saves Christmas and Iron Eagle II ten times because they were alternating at the theatre during the Christmas break from school.
At any rate, the film I saw tonight was Tough Guys from 1896, starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas and it was a basic “fish out of water” story about two older convicts released from prison trying to fit into the 1980s after being locked up for thirty years. It was also a vein of films that show up from time to time that feature aging actors playing up the fact that they are aging and are either a) making fun of that fact or, b) raging against it a little bit, showing they are still relevant or showing why the younger generations still need them. Think Grumpy Old Men or Going in Style, a Michael Caine/Morgan Freeman remake of a George Burns flick, or the one with Burt Reynolds and Richard Dreyfus as retired mobsters whose name I can’t remember.
Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas are stars from the so-called classic golden age of Hollywood, coming up in the 50s, 60s and 70s and this was a comedy that played on their hard-boiled personas as two older guys trying to fit in to the new 80s reality. Thirty years ago their characters, Archie and Henry, tried to rob a train and didn’t succeed. Fast forward thirty years and they are released and dealing with a new reality. Dana Carvey plays their parole officer and he sets up Archie at an ice cream parlour and sends Henry off to a retirement home because he is over the age of retirement. What follows is a bunch of fish out of water scenes and sequences that highlight how out of touch they are but in the endearing “it’s the world that’s out of touch” way as Lancaster’s Henry clashes with the Home’s staff over wanting real food or Douglas’ Archie gets in trouble with entitled kids or joins a co-ed gym. They are hounded by Charles Durning as the cop that caught them thirty years ago as he is convinced they are getting ready to get back to a life a crime and another guy that is trying to kill them.
The flick has its charm but it features some of that micro homophobia, sexism and racism that was pretty pervasive in 80s movies. Dana Carvey, of Saturday Night Live/Wayne’s World fame, plays a straight man to all the comical activities. I’ve decided for this review I won’t spoil the movie for you, it is a pleasant diversion though the above aggressions are more noticeable now than before, you can find it on iTunes, not sure where else.
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