Old-guy hitman movies have been on a roll lately with Liam Neeson’s In the Land of Saints and Sinners and Ian McShane’s American Star (both released last year) proving to be strong recent entries in the genre. It’s too bad then that Christoph Waltz’s new addition to the canon, which is quite literally titled Old Guy, can’t keep the good times going. Directed by the typically reliable Simon West (Con Air, The Expendables 2), Old Guy looks the part of a classic, character-based action-thriller, but, ultimately, the script is far too flimsy for the film to coalesce into something interesting. It’s too bad, as Waltz could almost certainly crush in one of these, given the right material.
What Is ‘Old Guy’ About?

In Old Guy, Waltz plays Danny Dolinksi, a London-based contract killer who’s just gotten joint-fusion surgery on his shooting hand and is being phased out by the corporate hitman organization he works for (“We’re going younger across the board,” he’s told by a superior). As part of his transition away from field work, Dolinski is asked to supervise and serve as a mentor to Cooper Hoffman’s Wihlborg, a young upstart assassin who’s considered a prodigy by the higher-ups but has a problem with killing innocent bystanders while he’s on the job. (Why this kid is held in such regard even though he keeps screwing up at work is one of the many puzzling questions that the script, by Jib Polhemus, Martin Brennan, and Hal Sadoff, fails to answer.)
The pair are shipped off to Belfast to eliminate a target on a golf course, and, when Dolinski can’t bring himself to take a back seat to the work at hand, the twosome’s professional relationship becomes immediately strained. Still, the job gets done, and more contracts come their way as their organization starts muscling in on a rival syndicate operating in Ireland. Along for the trip is Lucy Liu’s Anata, a sorta-on-the-level club manager who has a contentiously flirty relationship with Dolinski. As the body count starts piling up, everyone’s spot in the hitman pecking order suddenly starts to become less important than making it out of Belfast alive.
‘Old Guy’ Offers Up a Generation Tale of Murder

Waltz’s character is positioned a little differently than most other old-guy movie assassins in that he’s not experiencing a crisis of faith or regretting some of the life choices he’s made in his advancing age. Instead, he’s thrilled to be a hitman and spends most of his nights out partying at the clubs, dancing, and picking up girls half his age. Suddenly facing a future where he’s being pushed out of the job he loves isn’t a bad place to start this story. The problem is, from that point, the film entirely hinges on the relationship between Dolinski and Wihlborg, which has the outline of a tropey “buddy movie” dynamic but fails to make their supposedly growing friendship one worth caring about. It doesn’t help that the writers decide to kick things off with some eye-rollingly bad generational observations. Boomer Dolinski wonders why he can’t say the “R”-word anymore and mocks Wihlborg’s disaffected Gen Z’er for painting his nails. Wilhborg won’t drink alcohol and has no idea who Nancy Reagan is. You get the sense that this was supposed to be an action-comedy, but somebody accidentally forgot about the comedy half. Things don’t improve much even once the action ramps up, as the writing remains flat-lined the whole way through.

Related

Daniel Craig’s Bond Movies Absolutely Wasted Its Best and Only Villain To Appear in Multiple Movies

The only Bond villain to appear in multiple films might as well have skipped the last two.

Waltz’s half-working hand is a continuing problem…until suddenly it isn’t. (A better film would have made a bigger moment out of that.) Dolinski and Wihlborg have different approaches to their job — the latter thinks they’re artists, while the former considers what they do “sanitation” — but we never see that dichotomy in the ways they work. They argue about morality, but it all feels like window dressing applied to overly generic action beats. Perhaps there’s a whiff of an interesting story here, a tale of blue-collar hitmen from different worlds caught in a corporate war being waged by their bosses, but it’s completely backgrounded until the shootout finale.
Christoph Waltz and Lucy Liu Deserve Better Than What ‘Old Guy’ Gives Them

Image via The Avenue

As far as the cast goes, Waltz and Liu deserve better. So brilliant in Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, Waltz has struggled to find other filmmakers who can play to his strengths as well as Quentin Tarantino can. A natural orator who makes dialogue sing, Waltz largely comes up empty here, as there are no words in this script worth chewing into with the level of gusto we know he can provide. Liu has also excelled in Tarantino’s world before. But she, too, has largely been unable to find roles that match her Kill Bill and Charlie’s Angels highs and has taken on a lot of animated voice-over work over the last decade and a half. A meaty role in Steven Soderbergh’s recently released ghost story Presence looked to have her finding a new gear, but, in Old Guy, she seems adrift playing a shallow “love interest” role that’s largely unconnected to the story at hand.
That leaves Hoffman, on whom the jury is still out. Being the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman puts him in the impossible position of people expecting him to live up to his father’s legacy. His interesting work on Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza placed him on the map, and he held his own in Saturday Night’s buzzy ensemble last fall. But there is nothing in Old Guy that indicates he can suitably follow in his dad’s footsteps. Philip would take a nothing role in Twister and still have people talking about it 30 years later. Cooper takes a nothing role here but can’t manage to elevate it the least bit. Wihlborg doesn’t seem threatening. He doesn’t seem like a prodigy. He doesn’t seem psychopathic. He just seems to exist in a blank and boring state (For a much more interesting version of this character, kindly refer to Jack Gleeson in the aforementioned In the Land of Saints and Sinners). Old Guys’ entire narrative momentum hinges on the viewer believing, by the end, that Dolinksi would risk his life to save Wihlborg, but it rings false as the movie never properly builds a believable bond between the two men.
West is one of our better B-action-movie craftsmen, so at least Old Guys looks like a real movie. Although I’m not sure if we needed to see Waltz out dancing at the club three different times. Four, if you count the end credits. Yes, this movie is a bit padded, even at 93 minutes. And, in a vacuum, a couple of small bits, like Waltz turning an ironing board into a makeshift bullet shield, have their low-budget-action-movie charms. But, ultimately, no amount of craft can save a story that feels this boilerplate and offers up characters this humdrum. Old-guy hitmen have done much better for themselves in the past and will no doubt fare better in the future. The genre always carries on.

Old Guy

Release Date

February 21, 2025

Runtime

103 minutes

Director

Simon West

Writers

Greg Johnson

Pros & Cons

Christoph Waltz has a few good moments in a role that feels beneath his talents.
Director Simon West at least has Old Guy looking half-decent.

Old Guy is neither thrilling nor amusing, which is a big problem for a film that positions itself as a “buddy action-comedy.”
Cooper Hoffman and Lucy Liu are unable to elevate roles that feel severely underwritten.
Even at 93 minutes, the movie feels padded.