Review of Old Guy
Old Guy (2025) Dir. Simon West
Old Guy suggests that being a hitman is a young man’s game but could the same be said of action film directors? Well possibly, given what’s on show in this sadly pedestrian action comedy.
Don’t be fooled by a rather great opening credit sequence that updates the crime animation style of Catch Me If You Can for a 2025 streetwise audience. We open the film proper on Christoph Waltz as Danny Dolinski who is partying wildly in a nightclub. And soon he wakes in bed suffering from a haze of wanton womanizing in a London hotel. (Well, I say London but this scene is definitely The Harrison Hotel in Belfast as I’ve stayed in this exact room when visiting!)
Anyways, we discover he’s an untamed contract killer, but is struggling to return to his “work” after a medical operation on his shooting hand has adverse effects on his aim. After cleaning up a mess created by a younger assassin, he tries to reclaim his position but is told by a shady handler that he should retire with the only other option to train new recruits.
He is paired with Cooper Hoffman (off the back of an engaging performance in Licorice Pizza) as Wihlborg, a confident 20-something ready to take over as the lead hired gun with a quick draw and feisty attitude. Immediately the two men butt heads but soon travel to Belfast to undertake a mission that gets complicated by unforeseen underworld dealings.
And that’s it my friends. A simple pairing of criminals with opposite personalities in a straightforward narrative is an easy win, right? Not so. There’s something so perfunctory to the proceedings that it’s far too inoffensive. And to a huge fault.
At times it feels a throwback to the late 90s post-Pulp Fiction crime genre featuring fast-talking hitmen and quick dialogue. But it does this with so little 'oomph' that it could really do with taking a few risks - or a big swing in any of its average aspects - to capture some sort of missing Guy Ritchie energy.
Lucy Liu appears, then mostly disappears, in an absolutely nothing of a role and features as part of a criminally underwritten subplot. There’s just no creativity here - in the camerawork, the staging, the action or the dialogue. It has straight-to-streaming energy oozing from every undercooked scene. A double-cross plot is hackneyed and it feels half finished at times. Just no.
And all this from the director of action crime classic Con Air? Oh my. You’ll certainly feel old after finishing the film as its 90 minutes feels like 90 years.
The “plot” continues as Waltz attempts to school his young sharp-shooter student but this is no Schultz and Django. There’s a huge gulf between this film and other belligerent hitmen abroad fare like the excellent In Bruges.
Superstars Waltz, Liu and Hoffman may just drag your interest over the line but it’s a movie that throws away its talented cast on middling mush. In the end, Old Guy is just too over the hill, and despite the cast’s best efforts it’s sadly pure background fodder of the blandest kind.
★★
2 / 5
Michael Sales
