It’s not that Jeff Bridges has never done action before. He’s the surprise baddie in the first Iron Man (though he spent most of the time squirreled away inside a big robot), and he gets into shoot-‘em-up skirmishes in both the Coen brothers’ True Grit and Hell or High Water. But what the beloved (and hopefully cancer-free) actor hasn’t done is go full late period Liam Neeson and start playing an ass-kicking old-timer. And yet that’s exactly what he’s doing in the trailer for FX’s The Old Man.
In the preview, Bridges — whose output over the last two decades has erred towards laid-back, oft-grizzled, but usually chill — goes full AARP beserker as the aptly-named Dan Chase, a former CIA operative who rages back to life when an assassin tracks him down and tries, and fails, to take his life. Based on the 2017 novel by Thomas Perry, it’s not a movie but one of those limited series stretched out into a series, with, of course, the possibility of getting another season, just as what happened to The White Lotus.
Also along for the ride is John Lithgow, playing an old colleague involved in the attempt to nick Dan and expose his mysterious past. The last Neeson actioner, Memory, underperformed, but maybe the small screen is the place for aging Boomers to watch people their age or thereabouts act sprier than they are. Like maybe the forthcoming Hell or High Water TV show.
You can watch the trailer in the video above. The Old Man is set to premiere on FX on June 16.
