Take Art Carney out of the sewer and he's a pretty good character actor. You didn't get a sense of his range as an actor while portraying Ed Norton in "The Honeymooners". Here he's joined by George Burns and Lee Strasberg as retirees trying to make ends meet as their lives hit the doldrums sitting on park benches and watching the rest of their years pass by. One thing I had to check was the ages of the three actors in the picture; Carney is actually the youngster of this group at sixty one when the film was made. Strasberg was seventy eight and Burns was eighty one with another two decades to go!
Once all the shenanigans with the bank job are out of the way, the story turns poignant for Joe Harris (Burns) as he has to endure the passing of his two long time buddies. Burns as expected is wonderful in the role, though I wish director Martin Brest had made him a gentler curmudgeon in that scene with the bratty looking kid in the park. He cursed the kid out twice and that didn't seem in keeping with his character. But then again, he concocted the robbery scheme and threw caution to the wind at the gaming tables. For the sake of the story, I'll go along with the seventy grand haul in Las Vegas, but it does make you wonder if they could have pulled it off for real.
Apart from the story, I did a major double take when the camera panned that cemetery that was filmed for the movie. Holy cow - it was huge! So much so that I had to look it up. Assuming it was in or close to the Astoria, Queens neighborhood the three elderly gents lived in, a search came up with the Calvary Cemetery in Astoria. It's one of the oldest cemeteries in the country, and one of the largest in terms of interments with, get this - over three million burials! It's always very cool when a movie leads me to an interesting bit of trivia like that. So now you know too.
Once all the shenanigans with the bank job are out of the way, the story turns poignant for Joe Harris (Burns) as he has to endure the passing of his two long time buddies. Burns as expected is wonderful in the role, though I wish director Martin Brest had made him a gentler curmudgeon in that scene with the bratty looking kid in the park. He cursed the kid out twice and that didn't seem in keeping with his character. But then again, he concocted the robbery scheme and threw caution to the wind at the gaming tables. For the sake of the story, I'll go along with the seventy grand haul in Las Vegas, but it does make you wonder if they could have pulled it off for real.
Apart from the story, I did a major double take when the camera panned that cemetery that was filmed for the movie. Holy cow - it was huge! So much so that I had to look it up. Assuming it was in or close to the Astoria, Queens neighborhood the three elderly gents lived in, a search came up with the Calvary Cemetery in Astoria. It's one of the oldest cemeteries in the country, and one of the largest in terms of interments with, get this - over three million burials! It's always very cool when a movie leads me to an interesting bit of trivia like that. So now you know too.