Going in Style’s Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin on ageing as actors
Trio, who play a gang of elderly bank robbers in new old-guy buddy comedy, reflect on how they got into acting, the careers they’ve had ... and why they haven’t retired yet
Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin would, if they ever sat still long enough, make a respectable Mount Rushmore.
One could hardly find a more formidable trio of such overwhelming character. Their voices, alone, are utterly unmistakable. Put together Arkin’s streetwise Brooklyn accent, Caine’s nasally Cockney cadence and Freeman’s deep Mississippi timbre and you’d have the most colourful radio play ever assembled. Or you would have Going in Style, a new old-guy buddy comedy that teams the contemporaries (Caine is 84, Arkin 83 and Freeman 79) for the first time.
A remake of the 1979 comedy with George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg, the three play retired factory workers who, after having their pensions taken away, decide to rob a bank.
Freeman and Caine have made a few movies together (the Dark Knight films, Now You See Me) and are friendly. But as Caine points out, there are divisions. Freeman lives in Mississippi and Caine in London. “And he’s a golfer,” Caine says. “I can’t play golf. I was great friends with Sean Connery until he learned how to play golf on Goldfinger. I never saw him again.”
So all the more reason to appreciate a rare assembly of three legends, who during a recent interview most enjoyed themselves by trading Casablanca lines. Of all the gin joints in the world...