Pick of the week: A robot turns to crime

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

“Robot & Frank” is such a sly, dry, modest-seeming picture – part science fiction, part social satire, part geriatric comedy – that you don’t realize how well it works until it’s over. Everything about this movie, from Jake Schreier’s direction to Christopher D. Ford’s screenplay to the magnificently collected, unself-pitying performance of the great Frank Langella as an aging cat burglar, is deliberately understated, as if to convince you that the movie lacks ambition or allegorical heft. Even the title sounds like an in-progress file name Ford might have used in Final Draft – well, it’s got a robot, and we’ve cast Frank! And the finished product makes perfect mid-August moviegoing fare: You can watch it as a lightweight, family-friendly comedy about an old guy dragging his electronic healthcare aide into a life of crime, only to discover a day or two later that the mood and ideas and emotions have stuck with you.

Salon.com > Frank Langella

Pick of the week: A robot turns to crime