"Stand Up Guys" directed by Fisher Stevens, written by Noah Haidle.

Starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, and Alan Arkin.

Okay.  I saw this film on a double bill with "Side Effects."  "Stand Up Guys" was on first.  The review in the SF Chronicle had the little guy jumping out of his chair and so much as said it was a funny take on old, ex-mob guys.  I asked myself, How could it lose with the trio of Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, and Alan Arkin?  So I left the dishes in the sink, threw on some clothes, raced out of the house and got there just in time.

Ends up "Stand Up Guys" is a film for men going through a mid-life crises who feel that their life didn't turn out like they expected.  They don't like themselves and wonder what life holds for them in the future.  So they go to this film and see these old guys in their seventies or eighties re-living their former life. Valentino-who insists on being called "Val" (Al Pacino with a shock of jet-black hair and the eyes of a sick bloodhound)- has just spent 28 years in prison for killing a mob boss's son; and Doc, played by Christopher Walken.  Doc still has it and keeps his cool for the most part.  He is single, divorced, lives in a one room apartment with no view and a roll-away bed.  He spends his days hanging out in sleazy bars and greasy diners.  But he's an artist who specializes in painting sunsets (symbolic?).  Then there's Hirsch (Alan Arkin), who lives in an assisted-living facility, hooked up to an oxygen tank.   The premise is that Doc has been tagged by the mob boss with the unfortunate moniker, Claphands (played by mob-boss stereotype Mark Margolis) to kill the guy who axed his son by ten the next morning.  The guy happens to be Val, Doc's best friend back in the day and to this day swears his fealty. 

Val and Doc were once bad guys for a rival mob who had lots of women, money, and respect- the kind of respect mobsters demand from other mobsters if you value your life.  Doc, with a gun in his waistband, meets Val when he's released on parole, offers to let him crash on his daybed till he gets on his feet.  Val bad-mouths everything in Doc's place, even telling him that his prison cell had it all over Doc's "hovel" (I didn't believe it for a minute).  Once you know that Doc was sent to kill Val, you wonder why he doesn't do it then.  But the movie would've been over in less than ten minutes.  Still, that would have spared us 80 minutes of badly written dialogue, snail-like pacing, and cliché set-ups.

Christopher Walken, Alan Arkin and Al Pacino.

Val wants to "party"- get it?  Doc takes him to a brothel he once frequented, now run by the daughter of the former Madam, who looks like a school librarian.  The scene devolves into impotence, sex enhancement drugs, priapism, a visit to Emergency where the late-duty nurse is none other than Hirsch's daughter, Nina, played by- you guessed it- ER star Juliana Margulies (she must have taken the part as a favor, having better things to do such as her role as law partner on the successful TV series, "The Good Wife").  She tells Val and Doc about her father, so they sneak him out of the facility sans oxygen tank, after stealing the mob boss's honcho's souped-up car.  Seems Hirsch had been their driver.  They indulge in a bunch of bad guy hi-jinks: out-running cops, driving the wrong way down a freeway, and breaking into a pharmacy and stealing drugs (which is actually kind of funny- the drugs were for elder ills).

They hit a bar where Val tips the DJ to play something "old-school;" he sweet-talks a girl into dancing with him- a scene out of "Scent of a Woman."  Next the three caballeros visit the brothel.  Here's where one of the fantasies of the mid-life crises sufferers' in the audience comes true.  Hirsch had bragged about his sexual prowess and when he descends the staircase after having it on with two or three girls, including the former Madam's daughter, they follow him, pleading for him to come back, even offering to PAY him.  Gobbing his face and bald head with sloppy, noisy kisses.

Doc's granddaughter, Alex (Addison Timlin), works in the diner he frequents.  She doesn't know who he is. He leaves her a note, a set of keys, and his paintings.  Doc confesses to Val what he's up to.   Claphands's goons are after them.  At dawn, Val and Doc break into a haberdashery and rip off a couple of quality suits which they wear to complete their deed, looking like spiffy undertakers.  The ending is totally predictable.  Oh, yes, there is gun-play (Why is it called that?).  Lots of it.   Badly directed and written, this film cried out for Quentin Tarantino.  It couldda been a good flick.  It takes place in one night and was shot in a low-down, warehouse neighborhood.  The palette- interior and ex- is dark.  These "stand up guys" should just stand down.  Thank god "Side Effects" took the bad taste of "SUG" out of my brain.