OK, that's it. No more movies about old guys needing erectile dysfunction pills as a recurring plot point.
If you took away all of the Viagra gags and jokes about prostates, ulcers and various other geriatric maladies in "Stand Up Guys," you wouldn't have a movie, and three of our greatest actors wouldn't have been made to look ridiculous.
‘STAND UP GUYS’
Cast: Christopher Walken, Al Pacino,
Alan Arkin,
Theaters: AMC Southroads 20, Cinemark
Tulsa, Starworld 20
Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes
Rating: R (language, sexual content,
violence, brief drug use)
Quality: 
(on a scale of zero to four
stars)
Academy Award-winners Christopher Walken, Al Pacino and Alan Arkin have no business being in this picture. Arkin is exceptional in "Argo" in theaters right now, and you shouldn't miss him. Walken was so good and so subtle in the underseen "A Late Quartet" recently, rather than the caricature of him "doing Walken" as he's done too often in past years.
Sometimes a select group of actors will collaborate, and audiences will get excited, for the idea that teaming certain performers together in the same film will spark movie magic. "Stand Up Guys" is not that movie.
The picture has a number of problems that one might associate with old age. It has no energy. It is often incoherent. It falls, early and often, and it can't get back up.
"Stand Up Guys" is an unfunny farce that meets mushy drama in an odd mix equaling nothing. After his appearance in Adam Sandler's unholy comedy "Jack and Jill," I would have hoped that Pacino could smell out a stinker like this one.
The three characters were once low-level partners in crime several years ago, when a heist gone bad sent Val (Pacino) to prison and Doc (Walken) and Hirsch (Arkin) out to pasture. Now Val is finally getting out of the joint, and his pal Doc is there to greet him.
Doc is also the person who's been ordered to whack Val upon his leaving prison, and after the first 30 minutes of this hackneyed storyline, I hoped that Doc would shoot Val soon and save the actors further embarrassment.
We all know that isn't going to happen as sure as we know that these geezer gangsters will revisit old haunts and talk about "the good old days" while going through the motions of one ridiculous situation after another.
Brothel? Check. Embarrassing Viagra moment? Check. Revenge on their enemies that means shooting a few guys? Check.
Watching three talented men trying to find meaning in a "last-hurrah" old-guy comedy and sentiment where there is none?
Check, please.
Original Print Headline: 'Stand Up Guys' needs to stand down
Michael Smith 918-581-8479
michael.smith@tulsaworld.com
