Going In Style: How Alan Arkin, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman Celebrate Their Twilight Years

A play on “going out in style”, Going In Style tells the heart-wrenching story of three seniors who have their backs against the wall, but refuse to let the sun go down on them.

Cheated of their pensions and savings, they deduce that they can save their families and themselves if they execute a byzantine bank heist. Only comedy can ensue, given that some of Going In Style’s actors legitimately have personal assistants who help them stand and walk in between takes.

Going In Style 2017 — Caine, Freeman and Arkin still going strong in their 80s

Three of the most revered thespians of their generation, Alan Arkin (Argo, Little Miss Sunshine) Michael Caine (Hannah And Her Sisters, The Cider House Rules) and Morgan Freeman (Driving Miss Daisy, Million Dollar Baby) take Zach Braff’s (the protagonist of Scrubs) decent script and perform an unassailable run with it.

A reboot of a 1979 cult classic, Going In Style has initial character-building and scenario-establishing scenes that might come across as too slow-paced, but its engaging script and even more captivating dialogue sucks a viewer in for the entirety of its second hour.

Unfurling a plotline that one could swear is a tribute to The Dark Knight’s bank heist and its memorable Burmese bandit story, which incidentally also starred Caine, Going In Style is endowed with another dimension of comedy by the incomparable Christopher Lloyd (Doc from the Back To The Future series), who in his older years reprises his celebrated and side-splitting scatterbrain role, with equal efficacy.

More laughs are added to the mix by compelling comedians who include the likes of Kenan Thompson and Josh Pais.

About going hard or going home, Caine quips during the film, “prison… three meals a day, better healthcare than what we have now,” which reflects how Braff went for broke in making what is easily one of the best heart-warming comedies of the season. Not bad for a bunch of seniors and Braff, who after Garden State and Wish I Was Here shows that he has come of age as a Hollywood filmmaker.