Director: Alan Beattie
Cast: Charles Durning, Pam Grier, James Keach, Bert Remsen

I don't just have an interest in movies themselves - I also have an interest in the various aspects that make up the movies themselves, as well as the movie industry in general. One of the things about the movie industry that gives me great interest at times are actors and actresses. One thing about the careers of actors and actresses that I find especially interesting is how many of these thespians who managed to achieve great fame and offers of A-list projects one day found themselves without getting offered A-list projects anymore. John Travolta went through this twice; his career first faltered in the mid-1980s, was revived with the 1994 movie Pulp Fiction, then after a string of popular movies like Face/Off and Phenomenon, he made the major studio movie Savages in 2012 and found himself from that point on being mainly cast in direct-to-video movies. Then there is the case of Michael Douglas, who was hot stuff in the 1980s and 1990s with movies like Basic Instinct and Wall Street, but then after the major studio movie The Sentinel in 2006, found himself either as a lead in independent movies, or in supporting roles in major Hollywood studio movies. Then there's Robert De Niro, who was cast in many major Hollywood movies for several decades, but today is mostly cast in direct-to-video or indie productions. This kind of thing doesn't just happen to male actors, I should point out. Take Kathleen Turner, for example. She was greatly in demand in the 1980s with movies like Romancing The Stone and The War Of The Roses, but by the mid-1990s, the offers to be in A-list movies - especially as the lead performer - all but completely dried up.

Now, what caused the decline of those particular actors? The reasons are the same reasons that have caused the decline of many actors over the decades. A large part of this is due to actors choosing too many wrong (read: low grossing) major Hollywood studio movies to be in, which soured the major Hollywood studios towards the actors - Serial Mom and Undercover Blues didn't do Kathleen Turner any favors, and Domestic Disturbance and Battlefield Earth didn't do the same for John Travolta. But there's another reason why that, at least with the major studios, why these and many other A-list actors were deemed no longer worth hiring, and that reason is: They become old. As you may now know, over the past few decades, movie ticket buyers have slowly changed so that less adults are buying tickets, but more young people are buying tickets. Since youths gravitate towards people their age, that means the popularity of senior actors is diminishing. But it's not just that that explains why older actors find it harder to get meaty roles in major Hollywood movies. To explain, pretend for a moment you are an executive at a major Hollywood studio, and a young screenwriter pitches you a raunchy hard R-rated sex comedy called Good Old Sex, which would be about the ribald and near-pornographic sexual escapades between the residents at the Shady Pines retirement home. With visions of wrinkled butts and droopy boobs jigging around while elderly couples do the nasty, you give a hard pass on the pitch. Then the screenwriter pitches you another idea, a horror movie called Old Blooded that would take place at the Shady Pines retirement home, where one geriatric resident gets it in his head to stab, beat, chop, skewer, and hack the other elderly residents. Likely you would have a vision of a feeble senior vainly trying to weld and use a machete effectively, as well as an uncomfortable vision of feeble seniors getting inflicted with great pain and gushing blood everywhere, and you'd ultimately give this pitch a pass as well.

The hard truth, for those who didn't get it with those two examples, is that when actors get to a certain age, they find that they have aged out of not only a lot of potential roles, but a lot of genres as well. It can be hard to find roles that not only a young actor could play, but a senior actor as well. But there's actually one kind of role that while at first you might not think a senior actor could play, has actually been done successfully with various aged actors. That happens to be action-oriented parts where the senior actor inflicts brutality or worse on other people. Think about it for a minute. One example is with Charles Bronson, who in his 60s was still kicking ass on movie screens thanks to producers Golan and Globus. Another example is with Michael Caine; when he was 76 years old, he played a former Marine who went vigilante and kicked serious ass in Harry Brown. Then there's Liam Neeson, who had a career resurgence when at the age of 56 starred in the action thriller Taken, and his ass kicking there resulted him being cast in many other action thrillers when he was in his 60s and 70s. Those are just three of many examples, which begs the question why audiences are more eager to see an aged actor kicking ass than seeing the star in other genres. I think part of the reason is that the feelings of wanting to be able to defend oneself and wanting revenge from time to time are universal among humanity. We moviegoers want to be assured we could do the same when we get older. I can understand those feelings, which in part explains why I was open to watching Stand Alone when it came my way, a movie that cast a 62-year-old actor as the lead in a movie that dealt with action and vengeance. That actor is Charles Durning (Dark Night Of The Scarecrow), who plays a World War II veteran named Louis Thibadeau who, in a prologue of the era, shows he was a badass fighting the Japanese in the South Pacific. In the present day, he lives a quiet life of retirement with his daughter-in-law Meg (Barbara Sammeth, Your Three Minutes Are Up) and his grandson Gordie (Cory Yothers, Prime Time) in the Los Angeles area. One day, while paying a visit to his war buddy Paddie (Bert Remsen, Tycus) at the neighborhood diner, his peaceful life is shattered when a gang member with a gun bursts in to make a hit against a rival, and shoots up the place. Fortunately for Louis, he's only minorly wounded, and shortly afterwards a police detective (James Keach, The Noah) asks him to identify the gunman. Louis eventually agrees to help with the investigation, which upsets his public defender friend Cathryn (Pam Grier, The Arena), who more than knows the danger that the gunman and his gang buddies - cocaine cowboys from Florida - have for anyone that threatens them. As you may have guessed, in short order not only Louis is in danger, but also his daughter-in-law and grandson. Though Louis has been living a life of peace for decades, soon he realizes he may have to reinvigorate his combat skills in order to defend himself and his family.

Before getting to the meat of Stand Alone - or, rather I would say the "fat" of the movie - I'd first like to talk about the movie's supporting players. As Lou's daughter-in-law and grandson, actors Barbara Sammeth and Cory Yothers are fine. There's pretty much nothing that their characters get to do that's not predictable - you'll always be a step or two ahead with what they do or say - but their interactions with father-in-law slash grandfather Lou do come across as authentic, giving the feel they've loved Lou for a long time and have that family familiarity you probably have with your own family. As Lou's long time friend Cathryn, Pam Grier is also pretty solid. It's a nice change of pace to see Grier in a non-exploitive role, but the role also gives her the chance to show a range of emotions, from kidding around to being in a near panic seeing her friend getting into serious danger. Bert Remsen, as Lou's other friend, only has a few scenes, but he shows some warmth that will make viewers hope he doesn't fall under the wrath of the antagonist. However, James Keach in the remaining major supporting role in the movie, the police detective on the case, seems almost bored in all his scenes, probably because his role goes strictly through the standard cliches of screen police detectives who try to convince reluctant witnesses to stand up. That's all the major supporting actors, so now it's time to move on to the lead actor, Charles Durning. I will say that when his character has a quieter moment - and there are a lot of them in this movie - he performs professionally and convincingly. In these moments, he doesn't perform with outlandish energy and enthusiasm - instead, he acts his age. While his character of Lou might not match the spunk of his grandson, we clearly sense in his near-weary tone a still great love for both the child and the child's mother. When things subsequently start to get darker for him, Durning's conviction to do the right thing and help the police doesn't strike a false note. Even when Cathryn or Meg plead with him to drop the entire thing, his defiance doesn't seem forced; we see he's a man who has lived a life that has shaped him to do whatever he's determined to do.

However, when Durning's character has to do more than make defiant statements and get down and dirty to some degree... well, that's a different story. For one thing, Durning wasn't exactly in fighting shape at this point of his career, being instead considerably overweight, despite how the image in the poster art I included in this review two paragraphs ago depicts him. And when we see the overweight Durning being made to dive for cover when bullets start flying, or running away as fast as he can from gang members who want to do serious harm to him, the sight of him doing such things is, well, comical to behold for the most part, and more than a little cringeworthy to see the few other times. The fact that director Alan Beattie had on his hands a lead actor who was severely overweight and not being swift on his feet or with his upper torso may explain why Stand Alone, ostensibly an action movie, has almost no action in its entire 93-minute running time. About the only action to be found in the movie is the (short) diner shooting, a mid-film sequence with Durning pathetically running away from the bad guys, and the climax where Durning finally makes a stand against the gang. This of course results in the movie having a pretty low body count (just seven people), which might not have been so bad had the action been executed with some zip and energy. But none of the limited action has this, instead having the same feel as if the director was half-asleep while his assistant threw a handful of mashed potatoes on the back wall of the shot. In fairness, there may not have been enough of a budget to beef up the action, because Stand Alone has a real shabby look to it. While shooting at real locations for the most part, most of these locations look little better than locations that had been long abandoned before the film crew moved in. The cinematography has that same vibe that you would find in a moderately budgeted American television cop drama from the mid-1980s. The "vibe" of the whole movie is also lessened by the music score by David Campbell (All The Right Moves), an electronic synthesizer sludgefest that sounds little better than what you could get from an electronic Casio keyboard of the era.

There are also a few clues throughout Stand Alone that director Beattie knew what he had on his hands, yet did little to try and save the movie. Despite his big (really big) leading actor Durning packing on the pounds, Beattie didn't consider some part of the screenplay by Roy Carlson (China Moon) would be unintentionally hilarious. Durning says at two points in the movie that he needs to exercise, and in another scene with Durning, there's a comment about Gordie eating too many donuts. But even had these jabs been removed from the screenplay before filming started, the screenplay would still have been pretty poor. While there are a few interesting moments here and there, ranging from showing how public defenders can make behind-the-scenes agreements with district attorneys, to showing how police can be so determined to catch the bad guys that they don't care about the welfare of witnesses that much, such moments are rare exceptions. Surprisingly, the character of Lou is for a few long stretches treated almost as an afterthought. Also, even at a running time of 93 minutes, the movie is ridiculously padded out, with passages of dialogue or entire scenes that serve no purpose; the plot could have been somewhat better told as one of those aforementioned mid-1980s hour-long TV cop dramas. The biggest flaw with Stand Alone's screenplay, is how unbelievably predictable the story is, not just with Lou's family members. The character of Lou's friend Paddie just seems to be there so that the gang can follow him home and... oh, you guessed it? And Cathryn just seems to be in the movie so when Lou decides to make a stand at his home, she'll come by and... oh, you guessed it? With a screenplay that at best just goes through the motions when it comes to themes like standing up and fighting back, and direction that is remarkably lacking passion and bite, Stand Alone just doesn't stand out among the countless other movies made over the decades that have shared its basic plot and themes - at least in positive ways.

(Posted June 17, 2025)