The Comeback Trail (2020)

Directed by: George Gallo | 104 minutes | comedy, crime | Actors: Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones, Morgan Freeman, Zach Braff, Emile Hirsch, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Kate Katzman, Eddie Griffin, Chris Mullinax, Patrick Muldoon, Julie Lott, Blerim Destani, Vincent Spano, Paul Witten, Aighleann McKiernan, Melissa Greenspan, Joel Michaely, Jermaine Washington, Desiree Geraldine

Robert de Niro. Tommy Lee Jones. Morgan Freeman. If you name those three names in succession, you take a moment for that. Because we’re dealing with the undisputed Hollywood elite here. Together, these gentlemen earned no less than seventeen Oscar nominations, of which a total of four were cashed in (twice by De Niro, once by both Freeman and Jones). But they are also three actors whose best years seem to be over. Jones was the last to earn a nomination, for his supporting role in ‘Lincoln’ (2012). Now that old age certainly does not have to be an excuse to no longer perform at your peak. Take, for example, Sir Anthony Hopkins, who astonished friend and foe with his imposing role in ‘The Father’ (2020) and won his second Oscar at the age of 83 (!). He promptly became the oldest Academy Award winner ever. In fact, the late Christopher Plummer was 88 when he earned a nomination for ‘All the Money in the World’ (2017). Keep this in mind for a moment…

De Niro is apparently no longer necessary, because since the turn of the millennium we have mainly seen him in bland comedies (‘The Irishman’ (2019) is the proverbial exception to the rule). Freeman has also limited himself to the light-hearted segment in recent years. Together with Jones, they can now be seen in ‘The Comeback Trail’ (2020), a crime comedy directed by George Gallo, a man who has a greater record of serving as a screenwriter (including ‘Bad Boys’ (1995) and all his spin-offs) than as a director. He had already worked with De Niro in the late 1980s, when they made the action comedy ‘Midnight Run’ (1988) together. ‘The Comeback Trail’ is a remake of Harry Hurwitz’s 1982 film of the same name, which has been rewritten by Gallo and Josh Posner, although they have changed little of the original story. De Niro plays Max Barber, a scruffy film producer who tries to revive his defunct career in 1974 Hollywood. However, the films he delivers are so bad (his most recent flop has the telling title “Killer Nuns”) that no dog wants to see them and the press mercilessly smashes them.

In order to keep going – one day he must have that box office success and that Oscar – Max borrows hefty sums of money from the shady gangster boss Reggie, without his business partner Walter (thankful role of Zach Braff) being aware of it. Fontaine (Morning Freeman). But he wants to see money back once in a while. Selling his top script ‘The Oldest Gun in the West’ to the slick but successful producer James Moore (Emile Hirsch) is beyond Max’s honor, so he comes up with a plan. He traps suicidal ex-Western actor Duke Montana (Tommy Lee Jones) for ‘The Oldest Gun in the West’ and takes out multimillion-dollar insurance policy to kill poor Duke, who still insists on doing his own stunts, on set. to hunt. Is that just as easy to score! But old Duke turns out to be tougher than everyone thinks.

As critics write of Max Barber’s latest film, “The only good thing is that this movie is only 90 minutes long,” the same could apply to “The Comeback Trail,” albeit 15 minutes longer. However, with De Niro, Freeman and Jones on board, you can never make a complete flop (even if they can only play on a third of theirs), and for movie buffs, the insiders’ jokes on classic films (the most notable example being ‘The Searchers’, the western from 1956 with which ‘The Oldest Gun in the West’ has a lot in common), movie stars and filmmakers still have nice winks, but otherwise ‘The Comeback Trail’ is mainly an uninspired remake with predictable and stale jokes and barely fleshed out characters.

It is always so confrontational that the once illustrious Robert De Niro nowadays prefers to lend himself to this kind of bite-swallow entertainment and that he drags his mates of yesteryear into the misery. You would think they don’t have to do it for the money anymore. It is to be hoped that De Niro, Freeman and Jones (with his beautiful weathered head, the youngest of the three, while he looks the oldest) will see the light in time and us in their twilight – like Plummer and Hopkins – still want to show one last glimpse of their immense talent, while you still can!