“The Old Man & the Gun” is worth seeing not just because star Robert Redford gives an excellent performance.

(Spoilers follow.)

A pointing commentary that you cannot negotiate with some individuals, and the best one, is when the audience sees Redford’s Forrest Tucker (a real-life robber) go into a bank to rob it, as he would do four more times the same day, even though he had just gotten free from jail. (The scene occurs after one has reason to believe the film is concluded.)

And Tucker was in jail throughout his life over seven decades.

Those expressions make the film one of the best of 2018.

Audiences may also sense that this is a story about Redford as much Tucker. Presumably not because Redford is a criminal, but because it seems to celebrate Redford.

Robert Redford, right, in “The Old Man & the Gun.” (Fox Searchlight)

And indeed, director David Lowery thought “How can we make this true story work for Robert Redford?” Lowery told The Huffington Post.

“That was my North Star in telling it: How can I take the facts, which are too good to be true and are numerous, and shape them around the last great movie star that we have in this era in cinema history?” Lowery told The Huffington Post’s Matthew Jacobs.

When doing that, Lowery did not know that Redford planned on retiring, The Huffington Post reported. It allows Redford to deliver a performance that would blow audiences away if we weren’t half-expecting it since it’s Redford.

References to Redford include a break from prison as seen in “The Chase,” an equine he rides, depictions of Redford as a young man, the first scene, “an eternal youthfulness,” the strange elements of Redford’s initial career efforts, and “a finger swipe worthy of ‘The Sting,” a Redford film, The Huffington Post reported.

It was Redford who thought that Tucker’s actions had “the right intrigue” for the silver screen, Jacobs wrote.

Redford, who liked Lowery’s “breakout film” in “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” went to Lowery with a 2003 New Yorker article about Tucker, The Huffington Post reported. The profile said that Tucker “had also become perhaps the greatest escape artist of his generation, a human contortionist who had broken out of nearly every prison he was confined in.”

Lowery took a few years putting the project together. In the process, he learned that the film should go beyond being a story we are used to about a likable antihero, Jacobs wrote.

Lowery changed the story of Redford to fit into Redford’s “charisma,” putting in a “screwball tempo” and “folksy score” to the film. It became the story of a person who attacks institutions people are used to, who America saw smiling and winking at her. The films that made Redford an idol saw the actor do the same thing, The Huffington Post reported.

“If you can’t help but fall in love with the Tucker of ‘The Old Man & the Gun,’ that’s the point,” Jacobs wrote. “The protagonist’s crimes, as one character observes, aren’t so much about ‘making a living’ as they are experiencing thrills wherever they can be found.”

Thus, the character demands someone viewers will be fine to accept even though they will see Tucker lying to “his new love interest” (Sissy Spacek) and bringing tears out of bank associates on their first day.

Locations: Jackson, Mich. (prison); Covington, Ky.; Newport, Ky. (Heritage Bank); Bellmead, Texas (American Bank); Fort Worth, Texas (stockyards, Tarrant County Belknap Jail Facility, Worthington Bank, TCC, Leonard Subway Tunnels, Health South Lancaster, T&P Building, Thistle Hill Historic Mansion, Near Southside District); Ohio (Dayton, Bethel, Blue Ash, Hamilton, Cincinnati, Batavia) (IMDb)