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Although it sat on the shelf for a couple years before being released, Marek Kenievska's offbeat story of small-town big-time larceny is worthwhile for more than being what Paul Newman claims is his next-to-last movie. Sure, Newman puts on an acting clinic as Henry Manning, a career bank-robber who fakes a stroke to get into a little Oregon nursing home; he can say more in a quick look than most actors convey in a lifetime. But the film easily owes as much to Linda Fiorentino, playing Carol, a nurse who sees through his ploy and talks him into committing an armored-car heist to reinvigorate the misplaced dreams of her prom-king-and-queen marriage.
She's been cast as the gold-hearted fatale or criminally-minded sweetheart many times before, but that just means she's gotten the act down pat. And her sultry understatement works well with his steely blue-eyed reserve. It's nice to see chemistry between unequal-age male and female leads generated more by what's left unsaid than by full-contact mattress mambo (if you ever want to liven up a party, drop in a tape of Random Hearts cued up to the scene where Harri Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas attack each other in the front seat of a rental car, and see how many attendees can keep from spraying merlot).
Not only that, but the sequence involving the actual robbery is one of the most protracted adrenaline fixes I've had in a long time. The problem is, I've started getting a little distracted every time I drive by a bank. B
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