An enjoyable new Ageing Dad drama: Disney+’s The Old Man reviewed

We men all think we’ve still got it, even when we’re well past 50 and young women look straight through us and every time we get up or sit down or lift something off a shelf we sigh or grunt with the effort. But sure, if push came to shove and we had to defend our loved ones, we’d definitely be able to fight off our attackers with our bare hands, no problem. It’s for people like us that The Old Man was created.

It belongs to that venerable tradition of Ageing Dad movies which stretches from Taken (featuring Liam Neeson and his particular set of skills) through to James Bond (Daniel Craig is now 54) and the Mission Impossible series (Tom Cruise is now 60). This one features Jeff Bridges who is even older – 72 – as Dan Chase, a long-retired CIA operative whose deep cover has been blown and whose past has come back to haunt him.

The premise is slightly absurd. At the beginning, we meet Chase in his remote, off-grid cabin, coughing and wheezing, unable to sleep properly, constantly having to get up in the night for yet another pee. Yet somehow, we are invited to believe, this ageing cronk has retained the strength and agility to go mano a mano with ruthlessly efficient assassins less than half his age and still emerge triumphant. Mind you, to be fair, he does have a pair of very well-trained rottweilers that answer to commands in German, that are really good at killing baddies, and that I hope don’t get killed because that would be sad.

Bridges, to his credit, makes all this plausible.