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There should be a lot more movies like this - stories that take a faithful film archetype and explore what happens to them decades later. Screw the kids; older people can be entertaining too, you know. I hope George Lucas is still around in 20 or 30 years to do one more Star Wars episode that shows Luke Skywalker when he's settled down in some far, far away retirement home, giving walking tours to visitors. "Did you have any trouble finding the place? Like I said, just look for the land speeder with the 'You can have my light saber when you pry my cold dead bionic fingers from around it' bumper sticker. Now this here is my old buddy Chewbacca. I had to have him put to sleep when he lost control of his bladder. His pelt sure looks peaceful there in front of the fireplace though. Get that door for me if you don't mind - I've been having a little trouble since they quit making batteries for this hand, and the only time The Force works for me these days is when I've eaten too much gondark…"
Well, give that treatment to any four of your favorite Mafia movie characters, and you've got the gist of The Crew. Burt Reynolds, Richard Dreyfuss, Dan Hedaya, and Seymour Cassel (Jason Schwartzman's dad in Rushmore) are ex-goombas frittering away their twilight years in a Miami apartment building. When financial pressures from invading trendo-yuppies conspire to kick them out, they stage a fake murder to make the place less desirable. It works, but the corpse they borrowed turns out to have been the senile-demented father of a cartel drug lord, and bada-boom bada-bing, you gotcha basic war goin' on.
You know what they say: age and a vast ethnic Old World criminal organization will beat youth and a truckload of automatic weapons every time, so the outcome is rarely in doubt. It's lightweight stuff for sure, as you'd expect from the screenwriter of the Farrelly Brothers' Kingpin. But Dreyfuss and Hedaya in particular have good comic timing and personae, and the supporting cast of Jennifer Tilly, Lainie Kazan, and Jeremy Piven (Gross Pointe Blank) aren't too shabby either. Also along is Carrie-Anne Moss in her first film since The Matrix, although she's a little harder to recognize wearing something other than skintight leather. C+
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