Tell me if you’ve heard this old chestnut before: Imagine an over-the-hill hitman, or assassin, or longtime man of crime, looking back on his life of debauchery and criminality and wondering where it’s all led him. Blend that with a sexy moll decades his junior (but not so young that she could be confused for his daughter) who provides the chance for late-in-life love, and a twitchy young protege whose very presence reminds the old guy of his impending obsolescence. Toss in a few half-baked quips and a modestly-staged shootout climax, and you’ve got just about every Liam Neeson/Nic Cage/John Cusack picture of the last fifteen years. Unfortunately, you also have the backbone of “Old Guy,” a warmed-over rehash of a million VOD actioner tropes, only slightly stained by the specific talent this one wastes.
Directed by Simon West (himself old hat at this kind of geezer-teaser schlock with “The Expendables 2,” “Stolen,” and “Mechanic”) the oh-so-creatively-titled “Old Guy” plops Oscar winner Christoph Waltz in the role of Danny Dolinski, a sixtysomething hitman finally hitting the end of his tether. He’s just recovered from hand surgery, and his arthritis doesn’t make his aim so good. But, he insists, he’s still got “some gas left in the tank,” and is eager to continue his three-decade streak of contract kills for a mysterious organization. In his latest job, though, a scheme to mess with the Irish mob, his handler Opal (Ann Akinjirin) forces him to take on a promising new killer named Wihlborg (Cooper Hoffman). “We’re going younger across the board,” she tells him, but he can read between the lines: He’s grooming his own replacement.
It doesn’t help, of course, that Wihlborg seems to be a ball of millennial or Gen-Z (“What’s the difference?” Danny groans) affectations: pastel streetwear, painted nails, an aversion to trans fats or alcohol. The bulk of “Old Guy” is taken up with Danny’s gruff, Hitman-and-a-Half antics with Wihlborg, which could be entertaining (Waltz and Hoffman, after all, are incredible presences on screen) if not for Greg Johnson’s painfully generic script. Sure, Waltz infuses Dolinski with just enough of his signature impish charm to give the role some idiosyncrasy; on an objective level, it’s fun to watch a mustachioed Waltz grin and dance his way through neon-lit clubs he’s clearly too old to be in. But poor Hoffman is trapped in a clumsy bag of kids-these-days affectations. He’s not even suitably annoying to convincingly earn Danny’s ire; he’s just A Guy, whose mere presence disrupts Dolinski’s lone-wolf persona.
That’s the least of “Old Guy”‘s problems, several of which include an absolutely thankless role for Lucy Liu as Waltz’s do-nothing love interest and a clunky, repetitive screenplay that fails to generate much interest in the ill-defined mobster-versus-mobster turf war our antiheroes have waltzed their way into. There are brief detours to save Danny’s mom from mobsters, a half-hearted rescue attempt in an abandoned mall (clearly a cost-effective location for a big finale shootout), and more wannabe-Tarantino dialogue than you can shake a bare foot at. Plus, so much of it is placed at the feet of Waltz, who can’t quite salvage this material. Dolinski is supposed to be a gruff, grizzled killer with a heart of gold, which clashes with Waltz’s prim, Cheshire-cat tendencies; it’s the kind of role better suited to Bruce Willis twenty years ago.
It’s hard not to feel for Waltz, who (as one of my favorite vintage Funny or Die sketches tells us) has seemingly had a hard time transitioning from his Oscar wins to true Hollywood A-list stardom. “Old Guy” feels like one of the only times the actor has had a chance to do something besides play a villain in a big action movie, and it’s a shame the movie around him isn’t up to its level (or his co-stars’, really). The Saul Bass-inspired title sequence is just icing on the cake: This is a warmed-over remix of crime comedy and thriller tropes, as awkwardly paced as it is murkily shot. No amount of mustard can give these jokes, or these conventions, better aim. Someone rescue Waltz from these kinds of roles before he truly becomes too old for this shit.
