With the advent of Peak TV and its talent-seeking bid war, movie legends flooded the tiny screen. Within the last decade, performers at the levels of Al Pacino, Jane Fonda, Julia Roberts and Christopher Walken suddenly discovered that starring in regular old television series was not under their dignity.
Almost everyone important may already seem to be on the move, but this week’s television is aimed at another celebrity. 72-year-old Jeff Bridges is a true member of an American aristocrat. He has made several guest appearances over the years, including appearing with his father in “Sea Hunt” and “Lloyd Bridges Show” 60 years ago. But the moody, deliberate seven-episode thriller, “The Old Man,” premiered on FX on Thursday, is the first series he can call himself.
Bridges plays Dan Chase, a former CIA agent who had to go underground after being caught up in a bad business in Afghanistan during the war with the Soviet Union. When the series begins, he’s washed away from hiding, and years ahead, we see him keep running and trying to figure out who’s behind him.
“The Old Man” offers the value of credible entertainment to see a silver-haired pro bring his deadly skills to counter young enemies. Twist with both fear and empathy.
This is an area already bet by bridge contemporaries like Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and outstanding Liam Neeson. However, the series is based on Thomas Perry’s novel, developed for television by Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levin (a collaboration between “Black Sails” and “Human Target”), an old man. While kicking, I keep in mind rather than cheering. Some ass.
Chase was a true believer in the Cold War and went beyond his mission in Afghanistan. His character has a quiet American element of Graham Greene’s Vietnamese era. The warrior puts him at risk for naive idealism and certainty (combined with the weaknesses of local women). He also has artless arrogance that can be fascinating until it becomes horrifying, Zoe McDonald (Amy Brenneman), the lonely woman he encounters during his flight. Quality shown by chance relationship with.
The most natural and real human actor around, Bridge easily navigates the flow of Chase characters. He is always compelling, even if his writing is a little glamorous and preached too much. And physically, he does a great job of communicating the combination of lethality and frailty of chase. This is a condition that is performed to be more inspirational than the victory of an action movie.
(After the first four episodes were completed, Bridges was diagnosed with lymphoma and reportedly infected with Covid-19 during cancer treatment, so filming of the show was temporarily suspended.)
The old man is really an old man. The first thing he does in the series is to get up in the middle of the night and urinate. And the show intermittently between paranoia and anxiety, which characterize Chase’s decades of hiding, and dementia, who claims his wife and fears he may come for him. Make an interesting equation. Both life on the run and loss of ability in old age involve forgetting who you really are.
The seriousness of the show’s approach to chase and the excellence of Bridges’ role make “Oldman” stand out, even with an unusually pensive introspective spy liler (until Week 4). Much better. Directed by the latest “Spider-Man” filmmakers Jon Watts and Greg Yaitanes, and under the music director of T Bone Burnett, the episode has texture and reasonable urgency.
Bonuses include John Lithgow, who offers professionally entertaining performances as the main enemy of the chase, and Harold Harper, a former CIA colleague who is now the FBI Honmachi. He’s the smartest guy in every room, and every scene, Lisgow, without a word, is sure to see the exact moment when Harper realizes that no one has dealt with it yet. Brennemann is also a good character whose emotions and uncertainties are true, although his actions may be more plausible.
But all that is really needed is a bridge and his supernatural ability to combine strength and delicacy, moody power, and a flash of biting humor. (He can get a fair amount of comic mileage from just a few words — “I too” for overly enthusiastic landlords, “Yeah!” For waiters who provide wine lists for unpleasant moments) Afghanistan Years are okay, but he suffers from impossible comparisons. He is not Jeff Bridges in his thirties.