Stand Up Guys (2012)
Directed by Fisher Stevens
After serving 28 years in prison for accidentally killing the son of a crime boss, newly paroled gangster Val reunites with his former partners in crime, Doc and Hirsch, for a night on the town. As the three men revisit old haunts, reflect on their glory days and try to make up for lost time, one wrestles with a terrible quandary: Doc has orders to kill Val, and time is running out for him to figure out a way out of his dilemma.
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What critics compared Stand Up Guys to
This isn't The Bucket List or Last Vegas or Stand Up Guys, films with Viagra jokes and references to adult diapers, made to reaffirm a sense that aging is just a matter of how young you are at heart.
It's a twist that unfortunately recalls Martin McDonagh's infinitely sharper but thematically similar In Bruges, designed to add an emotional layer that Noah Haidle's script doesn't fully pay off.
It’s sort of a poor man’s In Bruges.
In the case of this feel-good unconventional-family drama from actor-turned-filmmaker Fisher Stevens (“Stand Up Guys”), it was almost certainly the themes of redemption and acceptance that moved him, and gosh darn if “Palmer” won’t have the same effect on that part of the country hesitant to embrace liberal message movies.
And in the hands of actor turned director Fisher Stevens (“Stand Up Guys”), it’s never much more than a “star vehicle” in the classic sense — lots of close-ups of Palmer’s thousand-yard-stare, tank tops showing off the tattoos, a sex scene and out-of-his-league romance, and sympathetic moments of a fatherless ex-con easing into fatherhood.