“I’m not talking about making a living. I’m just talking about living.”

The Old Man & The Gun begins with an intertitle that reads, “This story, also, is mostly true.” I’m sorry, what? ‘Also’? You can’t give me an ‘also’ without giving me something, anything, before it! But then the opening credits begin and that vaguely familiar font starts laying out the names of the film’s contributors. Ah, yes, now I understand—Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) is our reference point. The “mostly true” bit, the font, and, most importantly, the star. Indeed, The Old Man & The Gun seems pretty hung up on the fact that Robert Redford has elected to take on a bespoke role that suggests the Sundance Kid retained his effortless charismatic glow into old age. Thankfully, this approach is agreeable to me, not least because writer-director David Lowery is quite successful in mimicking the New Hollywood aesthetic.

Though relatively unambitious as far as it goes, the film works up a pretty entertaining yarn about the life of Forrest Tucker, a career criminal who robbed banks, went to prison, and broke out of prison in an endless cycle. Not because he wanted the money or was a social outcast or anything, but because he enjoyed the thrill of it. In the film, which takes some liberties, the dapper old-timer goes about his business with two crotchety associates (Tom Waits and Danny Glover), is dogged by a perpetually weary detective (Casey Affleck) who comes to admire Tucker’s commitment to his craft, and finds a love interest (Sissy Spacek) who can’t decide if she believes his vague hints.

Everyone—even the bank managers who go all wide-eyed and stuttery when he reveals the revolver he keeps tucked in his jacket (and which we never see, because he can control the situation by sheer force of personality)—seems to like Forrest Tucker, and because he’s played by Robert Redford in a film designed to remind us how affable Robert Redford is, so do we. Redford is so loose-limbed and serene, in fact, that the tensions we expect to develop simply don’t, leaving us with an elegiac crime drama that climaxes with a languid car chase set to, of all things, Jackson C. Frank’s ‘Blues Run the Game’.

Redford and Spacek, and to a lesser degree even Waits, Glover, and Affleck, certainly overachieve in this understated film, but that’s precisely why it’s so dang enjoyable. More movies should slow down and let consummate pros bring those small, human, humorous moments to vibrant life.