Female Film Critics 24/375
The Old Man reinterprets and reinvigorates spy drama. A great mix of distinctive characters pays dividends episode after episode, humor and great repartee alternating with terrifying suspense. Increasingly important as the plot disentangles, the women prompt some disconcerting developments with multiple levels of meaning.
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Jeff Bridges delivers one of his most compelling performances in The Old Man, playing Dan Chase, a weary, disillusioned CIA agent who’s been living incognito in Vermont since he went rogue decades ago. He’s a gruff widower, guarded by two ferociously loyal dogs; ever cautious, he communicates with his beloved daughter Emily only by burner phones. When he’s ‘discovered’ and assassins invade his home, Dan goes on the run, picking up a lonely, troubled divorcee, Zoe McDonald (Amy Brenneman), along the way.
Read moreWhen Joel and Ethan Coen (“No County For Old Men’) decided to remake this iconic Western, they turned to the source: Charles Portis’s 1968 novel. Yet comparing Jeff Bridges’ irascible Rooster Cogburn with John Wayne’s is inevitable, since Wayne placed an indelible imprint on the role, winning his only Oscar in 1969 and reprising it in the 1975 sequel. That’s perhaps why the Coens focus on the character of Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), a fearlessly determined 14 year-old Arkansas girl who hires Federal Marshall Cogburn to track down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the hired hand who killed her father.
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