Stand Up Guys: Oscars Thrown Out the Door

I decided to buy Stand Up Guys since the pedigree of Walken, Pacino, and Arkin is unreal. I thought it might be equivalent of Glengarry Glenross where you combine great actors and dialogue and get greatness. I knew the reviews were less than kind, but I figured what the hell. Pacino is pretty charming, per usual, and Walken is very good as well, but the story is awful. Pacino is getting out of prison after 28 years. He was thrown in after accidentally killing the bosses son in the crossfire of a messy job gone bad. Walken, his best friend, picks him up from prison for his last night on earth. Walken is tasked with killing him by 10:00am the next morning as final retribution for his past crime. They do old guy stuff and some young guy stuff, but it's all fairly boring and uninteresting. It's awkward because parts of the movie make it seem like old people are similar and can do all the same stuff young people do and other parts make jokes of how old and behind the times they are. It's confusing in the aspect that it tries to combine humor, sentimentality, and a little bit of action all in one, and of course it misses the mark. It's all very strange in the sense that with your last night on earth after just getting out of prison I would do things differently. Walken doesn't even seem to juggle the responsibility and gravity of having to kill his best friend at 10:00am. Maybe that's because he never actually planned on doing it at all. The ending is a strange shoot-out with their former boss who Pacino pissed off by murdering his son, but it fails to bring closure and it's pretty dumb. Bottom Line: 5.7 out of 10. Far from worth seeing, but if it's on TV with nothing else I'd take a flier on it for a little Pacino and Walken together. Jon Bon Jovi wrote original songs for it apparently, which is also inconsequential and pointless, much like the film.