Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas team up one last time in Tough Guys. Harry Doyle (Lancaster) and Archie Lang (Douglas) are two old-time train robbers, who held up a train in 1956 and have been incarcerated for thirty years. After serving their time, they are released from jail and have to adjust to a new life of freedom, now as old men. Harry and Archie realize that they still have the pizzazz when, picking up their prison checks at a bank, they foil a robbery attempt. Archie, who spent his prison time pumping himself up, easily picks up a 20-year-old aerobics instructor named Skye (Darlanne Fluegel). Harry, on the other hand, has to waste away his days in a nursing home. They both have festering resentments --Archie for having to endure a humiliating job as a busboy; Harry for having to endure patronizing attitudes toward senior citizens. The two old pals finally go back to what they know best. After successfully robbing an armored car, they decide to rob the same train that they robbed thirty years ago.

Excerpt from B+N located HERE

Sexy and 70ish, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas strut their stuff as grey foxes in the giddy, gag-happy gangster spoof for golden-agers, "Tough Guys." These rough-and-tumblers seem to be drinking from that fountain of youth the seniors sought in "Cocoon."

Here they play a pair of gentlemanly train robbers who are culture-shocked when set free in decadent L.A. after 30 years in prison. They encounter yogurt, gay bars, new wave music and co-ed gyms, not to mention the sadder facts of life for senior citizens sentenced to second childhoods in old-age homes.

Lean and well-muscled, Douglas is the antithesis of over the hill. He's one hunky septuagenarian, showing off his powerful pecs as he pumps iron behind bars. Lancaster retains his masculine mystique less overtly, moving like a graceful leopard, eyes shining and suavity intact. These icons continue a 40-year association that includes "Gunfight at the OK Corral" and "Seven Days in May," but this is their first joint frolic. Caricaturing themselves without losing their dignity, they walk tall, clenching their teeth. They even perform their own stunts, running atop speeding trains and leaping from rooftops.

Naturally, the debonair ex-cons fail utterly at life on the outside. Douglas, fired from his job in a yogurt shop, asks, "What kind of business is that any way, selling bacteria to children?" Meanwhile, nursing-home resident Lancaster is disciplined because "you refused to eat your lunch and made love to a woman." Bewildered by what the world has come to, the old friends return to a life of crime. Ignoring their parole officer, the gentlemen bandits try to round up the old gang for a last caper. But the godfather wears a hearing aid, and his bodyguard has shrunk.

Gary Tooze

May 26th, 2017