Producers: Simon West, Jib Polhemus, Martin Brennan, Norman Golightly, Hal Sadoff and Petr Jákl   Director: Simon West   Screenplay: Greg Johnson   Cast: Christoph Waltz, Lucy Liu, Cooper Hoffman, Ryan McParland, Ann Akinjirin, Jason Done, Tony Hirst, Kate Katzman, Helen Ryan, Conor Mullen, Rory Mullen, Karishma Navekar, Charlie Hamblett, Maisy Crowley and Desmond Eastwood   Distributor: The Avenue

Grade: C

Another week, another hit man movie—one that turns out to be a thoroughly mediocre entry in the groaningly overstuffed genre, offering little that’s new and not doing enough to invigorate the familiar stuff. 

The sole distinction of “Old Guy” is that it stars Christoph Waltz, who brings his customary flair (as well as a prodigious moustache) to the role of Danny Dolinski, a veteran killer-for-hire who’s being sidelined by his longtime controller Opal (Ann Akinjirin) against whom, if he were in a different profession, he might bring a discrimination action on grounds of ageism.

But Opal has some justification for forcing Danny into semi-retirement: his shooting hand was seriously injured, how we don’t know, and though a surgeon has done his best to fuse the joints, Dolinski’s fingers can still seize up at any moment.  Anyway, she still intends to use him to dispose of employees who have proven unreliable (like the thug played by Ryan McParland in an early sequence) and to serve as a mentor of sorts to promising Wihlborg (Cooper Hoffman), an adept young killer who has the unfortunate habit of leaving too many innocent bystanders behind as collateral damage. 

The fact that the abstemious, New Agey Wihlborg is the diametrical opposite of hard-living, hedonistic Danny is supposed to add humorous contrast to the forced partnership, but the jokes that scripter Greg Johnson invents for them—like Wihlborg sarcastically calling Danny Obi-wan, or Dolinski dismissing Wihlborg as Nancy Reagan when the younger guy criticizes his drug use (a reference Wihlborg, of course, doesn’t get)—land with a thud.

In any event, the duo are sent to Belfast to terminate some of the major players in the Northern Irish mob, apparently so that Opal and her cohorts can take over.  Danny impulsively invites Anata (Lucy Liu) along—she’s the manager of a swanky London club that serves as a bordello, and claims that she’s always wanted to visit there. So as Danny gets to work, he’ll have somebody to spend the nights with.

The first kill, on a golf course, goes badly when Danny’s hand acts up and Wihlborg has to save the day.  The second is meant to demonstrate another difference between the unwilling partners—Danny has old-school principles, while Wihlborg is ethics-free.  That’s made clear when Danny not only refuses to be bribed by their target (Conor Mullen) into sparing him and instead killing their employer, but makes sure that the guy’s sweet little granddaughter (Maisy Crowley) is tucked safely in  bed before blasting her granddad.

His adherence to a code is even more emphatically proven when, in the final act, he insists on rescuing Wihlborg, who’s captured when they’re betrayed by one of their own.  Miraculously, Danny’s hand shows no signs of impairment as he effortlessly disposes of a small army of well-armed thugs and takes out their leader.  Nonetheless the business puts them all at risk, and they must flee to safer climes, stopping only to pick up Danny’s aged mother (Helen Ryan).  We’ve been told early on that he’d extricated her from Poland, but the old girl appears to have been in Ireland long enough to have picked up a thick brogue even though her son retains his accent.

“Old Guy” offers some nice shots of the Irish countryside, courtesy of cinematographer Martin Ahlgren, but despite Waltz’s energy and the efforts of director Simon West, an action-movie veteran, and no fewer than four editors (Andrew MacRitchie, Todd E. Miller, Chris Gill, John Walters), it manages to stir up very little suspense or excitement. 

Nor does the cast apart from Waltz add much to the mix.  Hoffman may have inherited some of his father’s talent, but he simply seems miscast here, though the script gives him no help.  Liu fares even worse: a scene with a doctor she’s been romancing in hopes of something permanent, clumsily inserted to give the character a smidgen some depth, is an embarrassment.  Oh, well, anyone who’s ever seen a movie before knows full well from their first moment onscreen that Anata and Danny are fated to be together in the end (Mother Dolinski obviously can tell that as soon as she meets her).  The supporting cast is purely functional, though Ryan and Crowley each connect; so is Heather Greenlees’ production design (only Opal’s mansion impresses), along with the drab score by Andrew Simon McAllister and Zero Vu.

It’s nice to see Waltz in a lead role.  Now would somebody write one worthy of him?  The best you can say about “Old Guy” is that it’s not as bad as “Love Hurts,” and doesn’t treat him as poorly as that mess did Ke Huy Quan.   

Producers: Grant Bradley, Derek Dienner and Dale G. Bradley   Director: Damian Harris   Screenplay: Dale G. Bradley and Lynn Robertson-May   Cast: Jared Harris, Nicholas Hamilton, Jamie Harris, Sasha Bhasin, Will Price, Kimberly Fairbanks, Meredith Sullivan, Cole Tristan Murphy, Banks Quinney, Tobias Segal, Ben Sarro, Sung Yoon, Niva Patel, Pat DeFusco, Brandon Miles, Elise Hudson, Susanne Sulby, Michael Harrah and Carol Florence   Distributor: Angel Studios   

Grade: C

Today’s faith-based films don’t always deliver the heavy-handed religious messages they once did; often they play down the explicit religiosity in favor of more generalized inspirational uplift.  That’s the case with this latest offering from Angel Studios, in which there’s a brief shot in which a man clasps his hands in what looks like prayer in a hospital corridor, but which overall is more like a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie than a Christian homily.

That’s not to say that “Brave the Dark” isn’t heavy-handed, just that it doesn’t hit you over the head with a Bible.

Essentially it’s a based-on-a-true-life tale of the power of kindness to change the life of a teen damaged by the traumatic events of his childhood.  We meet Nathan Williams (Nicholas Hamilton) as a surly high school student trying to work off his anger on the running track of Garden Spot High in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; the year is 1986.  He’s noticed by genial, gregarious Stan Deen (Jared Harris), the nice-guy English teacher everybody likes, as the kid bangs away furiously at a vending machine.  In class Stan gives him a chocolate bar to break the ice.

Nate has fallen in with the wrong crowd; rich classmate Johnny (Will Price) is a particularly bad influence, enticing him into penny-ante thievery, which leads to Nate getting arrested.  Stan intervenes, despite warnings from his faculty colleagues, including his friend and colleague Deborah (Kimberly Fairbanks), because he thinks Nate has promise.  (Or maybe it’s because he’s in the midst of directing the student production of “Flowers for Algernon,” and sees Charley’s potential in the boy.  Or maybe it’s because, his elderly mother having recently died after he’d cared for her for eight years following her stroke, he’s desperate for something to fill his days.)  Anyway, Stan uses his many friendships—he seems to know everybody in town—to get Nate released to the custody of his elderly grandparents (Michael Harrah and Carol Florence) until his case comes up in court.

Nate’s life, we gradually learn, has been an unhappy one.  His beloved mother Grace (Meredith Sullivan), who’s introduced in gauzy flashbacks playing with him (Blake Quinney) as a kid, died when he was very young—in an accident, the grandparents say, though they add she was always trouble—and since they couldn’t deal with him, they placed him in an orphanage.  Now he’s assigned to a foster family, but has been sleeping in his car; he joined the track team to have a place to shower.  To make matters still worse, Tina (Sasha Bhasin), the classmate he’s infatuated with, has been ordered by her father to break up with him because of the arrest, and Nate goes ballistic seeing her with another guy (Cole Tristan Murphy).  It appears that he inherited extreme jealousy, and the propensity to lash out because of it, from his father (Tobias Segal)—a violent man, as will be revealed in a revelatory flashback toward the film’s close.

Determined to help the boy, Stan persuades Nate’s grandparents to turn over guardianship to him—the judge, whom Stan of course knows, readily assents—and the youngster moves in with him.  The yin and yang of the relationship is pretty predictable.  Nate shows himself a talented photographer, but still occasionally goes off the rails over Tina and can be lured back into crime by Johnny.  (Luckily, Stan’s friendship with his parole officer Barney, played by Jamie Harris, helps when the boy stumbles.)  Nate does research on microfilms of old newspapers to confirm his repressed memories about how his parents actually died.  He invites Johnny over to Stan’s house while Deen’s away, and the evening burgeons into a drunken party that leaves the place a mess.  There will, naturally, be a suicide attempt, which explains that scene in the hospital corridor.  But despite a moment after the house-trashing when he seems inclined to throw in the towel, Stan persists, and in the end Nate, of course, overcomes his trauma and emerges a good man.

The actual Nathan Williams (who, were told, ultimately changed his name to Deen) appears at the end of the picture to promote Angel’s usual “pay it forward” policy, and to invite contributions to the Stan Deen Foundation (Deen himself died in 2016).  But despite the fact that Dale G. Bradley and Lynn Robertson-May based their script on one Nathan himself wrote with John P. Spencer, the film quickly falls into formula.  Nor does it help that Hamilton proves a rather stiff presence as Nate, though he loosens up for the song “Never Alone” (a title that gives you a hint of the on-the-nose quality that pervades the picture), which he co-wrote himself (with Arthur Pingrey) and sings in a duet with Belinda Carlisle over the final credits.

Perhaps to compensate, Jared Harris, usually a fairly restrained actor—even in sinister roles—is frantic, almost manic, as Deen. There are moments suggesting that Stan is suffering from severe heart trouble, but that plot thread is simply allowed to drop unresolved; rather, apart from moments of exasperation with Nate or sadness at the thought of his mother and that one instance of being ready to give up, he’s relentlessly, even exhaustingly, upbeat.  Under the apparently liberal direction of his brother Damian, he just seems to be trying too hard.  By contrast third sibling Jamie—this is a family effort—as Nate’s parole officer, seems nearly incapable of moving a facial muscle for the sake of expression.  The supporting performances range from competent (Price, Fairbanks, Sullivan) to amateurish (Bhasin, Segal).  Little Quinney appears utterly lost.

On the technical side, the movie is okay, but no more.  Though it’s shot on actual Pennsylvania locations, Michael C. Stone’s production design and Marianne Parker’s aren’t terribly evocative of time or place, and Julio Macat’s cinematography is just ordinary, as are Toby Yates’s editing and the background score by Jacob Yoffee and Roahn Hylton.

“Brave the Dark” is earnest and heartfelt in encouraging acts of kindness to others.  That’s certainly a welcome message in today’s world.  It’s a pity the movie delivers it in such a flat, formulaic fashion.