- Title: The Old Man – I
- IMDb: link
An old adage for stories like these is how much trouble you can get into when you don’t let sleeping dogs lie. The opening episode of The Old Man introduces us to relatively normal looking Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges) whose time in hiding has come to an end when an old file is reopened and agents are sent to find and collect the agent of the CIA who disappeared decades before. I’ll give the show credit in casting Bill Heck as a younger version of the character in flashbacks who fits perfectly into what the show needs (at least for this episode). While we see glimpses into the skills Chase had, he isn’t John Wick or Bryan Mills, he struggles with dealing with the far younger agents sent after him.
The first episode also introduces us to John Lithgow as an assistant director who has a shared past with Chase and reason to want to see him disappear again, and does what he can, both through help and threats, to make that happen. However, it’s Dan’s daughter (Alia Shawkat), who is only heard over the phone, that convinces the spy to stand his ground and fight, despite what dangers it might put her in, leading to the episode’s realistic and clumsy (in a good way) action which sees Chase come out on top, thanks in large part to the help of his killer dogs, and declare war on the CIA.
Adapted from Thomas Perry’s novel of the same name, and having the feel of other Hollywood properties of older soldiers, spies, and killers returning to action, the first episode of The Old Man is mostly promise teasing but not revealing too much about why Dan left the CIA other than it involved the woman who would become his wife (played by both Hiam Abbass and Leem Lubany). As the younger actors appear to have appearances in several of the show’s episode, I would expect a slow reveal to the series of events that caused Dan to leave the CIA and what exactly they are still afraid of decades later.
