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'Going in Style' is a clunky escapade enlivened only by its three leads

( PG-13 ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

'Style' stars Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin as three former factory workers whose pensions are dissolved, inciting them to rob a bank for restitution.

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Atsushi Nishijima/Warner Bros. Pictures/AP
'Going in Style' stars Morgan Freeman (l.) Michael Caine (center), and Alan Arkin (r.).
  • By Peter Rainer Film critic

“Going in Style” wastes a great cast. Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Alan Arkin play three former factory workers whose pensions are dissolved, inciting them to rob a bank for restitution. It’s a remake of the 1979 Martin Brest film starring Art Carney, George Burns, and Lee Strasberg, which had a sweetness and grace that this ostensibly topical remake, directed by Zach Braff and written by Theodore Melfi, almost entirely lacks.

It’s a clunky, over-the-hill gang escapade enlivened only by the presence of the three Oscar winners, all of whom are so far beyond the movie’s meager demands that to say the actors are overqualified would be the grossest of understatements. Yes, it’s good to see these wonderful actors get together in, well, almost anything, but this broken-down jalopy of a movie is not, to put it charitably, an ideal vehicle. Grade: C- (Rated PG-13 for drug content, language and some suggestive material.) 

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