Tough Guys is a 1986 comedy starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Eli Wallach and Dana Carvey. The movie was directed by Jeff Kanew. Lancaster and Douglas made several films together over the decades, including I Walk Alone (1948), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), The Devil's Disciple (1959), and Seven Days in May (1964), which fixed the notion of the pair as something of a team in the public's imagination. Douglas was always second-billed under Lancaster in these films but, with the exception of I Walk Alone, in which Douglas played a villain, their roles were more or less the same size. Tough Guys was their final collaboration.
Plot
Harry Doyle (Lancaster) and Archie Long (Douglas) are two gangsters released from a 30-year prison sentence for hijacking a Southern Pacific train called The Gold Coast Flyer, ready to collect their Social Security.
Upon release, they are briefed on how their lives will be once they're released. Harry, at age 72, is committed to a retirement community, despite his desire to go to work (mandatory retirement age was 70 at the time of this movie, and this law has since changed); while Archie, still allowed to work, takes a job at an ice cream parlor. They're also instructed that they're not to have further contact with each other. It also turns out to be the first of many conditions of their parole that they ultimately violate.
Both are in for a shock at how much the world has changed from 1956 to 1986. Clothing, sexual lifestyles (they walk into their favorite bar only to find out that it's now a gay club), lack of respect by the younger generation, and the advance of technology. When working at a restaurant Archie's manager treats him poorly and Harry is denied proper food by an orderly.
A parole officer (Carvey) who seems more a fan of historically notable criminals than a parole agent, and a hit man Leon B. Little (Eli Wallach) who can barely see, but who still has an outstanding contract on them. Plus, does anyone still rob trains? In the end, Harry and Archie hijack the Gold Coast Flyer, on its last run being pulled by Daylight 4449, and run it full throttle to the Mexican border. But to their surprise, the tracks end a few feet from the border. Nevertheless, Archie uncouples the train and he and Harry drive the 4449 through a fusilade of bullets from US border police and crash the fence—burying the engine partially in the soil of Mexico a few feet across the border, surviving without a scratch.
Trivia
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