Review: Going in Style

 

When Joe visits his bank to discuss his crippling financial situation, he witnesses a successful raid. He later tells his pals, it was, “choreographed like a dance” and it plants an idea. Soon after, the trio learns that the steel company they had worked for has frozen their pension payments – as a result of corporate restructuring. Faced with the prospect of no money, their futures uncertain and for Joe, his house repossessed, they decide to take revenge and embark on a bank robbery of their own, stealing the money they earned from the bank that took it, giving any excess to charity.

 

The scheme gives the septuagenarians’ renewed purpose and meaning as they seek criminal assistance and plunge themselves into the unfamiliar territory of getaway cars and split second timing. Robbing a bank, they learn, is “an art form.”

 

Oscar winners, Caine, Freeman and Arkin are eminently watchable and there is a particularly easy - and at times - tender dynamic between Caine and Freeman, who have worked together many times before.  There is also a strong supporting cast including Matt Dillon, Christopher Lloyd and John Ortiz but overall, despite some amusing visual gags such as the unusual sight of Morgan Freeman sitting in the basket of a motorised mobility scooter, this crime caper feels forced and sometimes sluggish with the ‘everyone deserves a piece of the pie’ metaphor a little overdone. Going in Style is no great social commentary but a feel good, saccharine film that raises more smiles than laughs.  

 

 

 

 

Going in Style is on general from 7 April