Out of this elegiac comedy on Old Age and the Changing Times, Burt Lancaster's fans ought to get the same sort of sentimental tingles that John Wayne's got from True Grit. His role here is as a small-time numbers runner (and part-time poodle walker) who disdains the swanky new casinos as "too wholesome," and who comes off as something of an Old World gentleman in comparison with the scummy young drug dealers he unwittingly falls in with. This accidental entanglement affords him the first opportunity of his long career to notch up a gangland killing, and his attack of light-headedness in the aftermath is really something to see. The sentimentality of John Guare's script is alleviated not so much by the occasional touches of absurdism, which occasionally become touches of just plain silliness, but by the solid, old-fashioned craftsmanship. And French filmmaker Louis Malle brings an always tasteful eye to an environment that entices and encourages a vulgar one. With Susan Sarandon and Kate Reid. (1981) — Duncan Shepherd