Being haunted by the ghosts of our past can sound a little cliché at times, but when there’s not much of your personal future left, all one can do is reflect. And when you crossed a lot of moral lines, betrayed former allies beyond the pale of forgiveness, deceived your masters, and worked for the murderous American CIA regime in Afghanistan during the war-torn 1980s, the specters of your various sins are going to eventually catch up with you. Add a layer of fragile mortality to it all—aged characters looking back at what they wrought with much regret, and realizing they don’t have much time remaining— and you’ve got all the ingredients of a terrific story about remorse, setting things “right,” and the darkness encroaching around what’s left of your light.
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That’s the emotional baggage and back story of “The Old Man,” FX’s moody, searing, and super compelling drama about the past catching up with a rogue CIA agent and a 30-year-old grudge that’s come home to roost. Created by writers and showrunners Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levine, based novel of the same name by Thomas Perry, “The Old Man,” stars a stellar Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase, an aging septuagenarian living off the grid in solitude outside of his two deeply loyal and faithful rottweiler guard dogs.
Chase’s wife, Abbey (Hiam Abbass from “Succession”) passed on five years ago and succumbed to a form of dementia. But Chase keeps dreaming about her; suffering nightmares about her, more accurately. He has to bear the brunt of her many scolding from-the-dead warnings about what’s to come in his feverish visions—a manifestation of guilt, penitence, and transgressions about that which cannot be absolved.
One night, in a post dreadful reverie conversation with Abbey, an intruder enters the house, and Chase— being what we will soon learn is an ex-CIA assassin and stealth intelligence agent— easily dispatches the assailant and kills him; chasing making it appear like self-defense from a shootout. While the local police are puzzled why a burglar would use a silencer, Chase has no such confusion. The jig is up, his cover is blown and it’s time for Dan Chase to cease to exist so a new cover identity can emerge like shedding old skin.
But sharply written, with terrific mounting conflicts at every turn, before Bridges’ mystery man can do much—other than ring his daughter Emily and warn her that the past has finally found him — he receives another life-changing call. This one is unexpected, and from an old pal, the FBI’s Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Harold Harper (John Lithgow, incredibly convincing) giving him an unauthorized head’s up. Harper lets him know he’s currently being tailed they’re on to him and he’s got two options, both of which are grim.
Because Harper wants old secrets to stay buried— the past presumably so ugly, it’ll ruin whatever’s left of either aging man’s future. While aiding and abetting his old pal and risking his career, Harper details door number one: get going and stay gone, but never see your daughter ever again. Door number two: don’t disappear immediately and the Assistant Director will be forced to use his daughter to get to him and things will get ugly.
As Chase contemplates the crucial moments before he has to make life-altering choices, he has to flashback to the past. Because Dan Chase’s story is built upon good intentions that are blinded by narcissism and self-interest that destroys and betrays every ally he makes (a younger Dan Chase is played by Bill Heck). The first treachery is against the CIA, joining up with a particular sect of Afghan forces against orders, fighting against Russians because it’s the right thing to do. The second treason is betraying Faraz Hamzad (Pej Vahdat as the younger version, Navid Negahban playing the older version), one of the key Afghan tribal leaders he had sworn allegiance to, by falling in love with his wife (Leem Lubany as the young Abbey) and defecting out of both camps to hide a secret life in the U.S. of A.
For 30+ years, it works and this union between Chase and his Afghan bride spawns Emily, but for reasons that will come clear later, the Sword of Damocles rancor and resentment Faraz Hamzad has been patiently holding onto for three decades has its moment to strike.
It’s time to pay the piper. On the run, soon, Zoe McDonald (Amy Brenneman), a woman just renting a room to him, quickly becomes embroiled in Chase’s drama and is forced to accompany him on his getaway. Meanwhile, a highly trained special ops contractor Julian Carson (Gbenga Akinnagbe) is pursuing them, and working alongside Harper, his protégé Angela Adams (Alia Shawkat) and nosy, CIA Special Agent Raymond Waters (E.J. Bonilla) do everything in their collective powers to put the squeeze on Chase.
Directed by Jon Watts (Marvel’s “Spider-Man” trilogy) in the first two episodes, “The Old Man” is exceptionally thrilling and taut, a drama in the somber, smoldering mold of a “Michael Clayton.” While there are more guns and killers than in Tony Gilroy’s masterpiece, the same searing dark edges of the soul heaviness apply. In fact, these gripping first two episodes are the best work Watts has done since his 2015 Sundance breakout “Cop Car,” and make a strong case for the filmmaker to leave the superficial superhero stuff behind and dig deeper into this engrossing thriller mold that he absolutely excels at.
Also helmed by Greg Yaitanes and Zetna Fuentes, all of the poignant and compelling ‘Old Man’ absorbs, Bridges and Lithgow turn in fantastically convincing performances and the writing is smart enough to make villains look like heroes and protagonists resemble something much shadier, and add complexity throughout.
If there’s one foible to the writing, it’s the twisty story of Chase’s daughter Emily which we won’t mention because of potential spoilers. Suffice to say, it’s as complicated and layered as a double agent and it’s perhaps the one element of the show that may test the audience’s suspension of disbelief.
“The Old Man” hold secrets too. Only seven episodes long, the first half of the series doesn’t reveal how or why Faraz Hamzad is onto Chase only now and why the FBI has reacted (other than Harper trying to save his skin), but the entire nail-biting affair feels like a stack of dynamite sticks with several lit fuses slowly traveling down the wick to what will surely be an explosive showdown on multiple fronts. Four episodes in, the filmmakers of “The Old Man” have crafted a dazzlingly intense dramatic thriller that ranks up there with the best TV of the year so far.
Living on what feels like borrowed time, “The Old Man” is about reconciling the past to pay for what’s left of the future. But the survival of Dan Chase—seemingly fueled by a self-absorption we have yet to fully understand—feels so paramount to the rogue agent, it seems like the true extent of what this man is capable of, and the horrible lengths he’ll go to endure may have the most brutal of costs. [A-]
“The Old Man” debuts on FX on June 16.
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