The Grey Fox (1982)

After more than three decades in prison, gentlemanly – even the Pinkertons said so! – stage coach robber Bill Miner (Richard Farnsworth) is released right into the new Twentieth Century. There aren’t any more stage coaches to rob, so Bill tries his best to live the straight life from now on. It just seems to be that the civilian life is a bit of a sham that leaves some important part of Bill – something nearly mythical looking for freedom on his own terms - unsatisfied. However, a viewing of The Great Train Robbery (which seems to miss the film’s timeline for a couple of years, but what the heck) inspires Bill, so he goes off to Canada to become the country’s first train robber. He’s still polite and really not in the business of killing anyone, but his first attempt goes wrong thanks to less than great partner material.

Turns out, picking up a random weirdo alcoholic Shorty (Wayne Robson) works out better eventually. Most of the film takes place after that pair’s biggish first score, when they lie low as miners supposedly working for Bill’s old acquaintance Jack Budd (Ken Pogue). During this time Bill does start to appreciate the quiet life, also thanks to his finding love with feminist leftist photographer Kate (Jackie Burroughs), with a spirit as free and as opposed to societal rules as how one is supposed to live one’s as his own. The police and the Pinkertons (boo-hiss), are still on his trail, so the peaceful life after the criminal career might be just a pipe dream.

Phillip Borsos’s The Grey Fox is a very fine film, framing Bill’s restless nature as a form of romanticism circling around unexpressed ideas of freedom and independence with a certain, also unexpressed in words, somewhat self-destructive streak, like a less lethal case of one of those artists who believe that they need to suffer for their art and do their best to create their own suffering, or a revolutionary who hasn’t yet grown bitter and cynical.

Bitterness and cynicism seem to be completely inimical to the man’s nature, Bill treating everything and everyone with politeness, interest, and some kind of glint or twinkle (depending on the situation) in his eye, the epitome of the movie bandit who can’t stop his robbing because he doesn’t quite want to grow up; at least not in the same way as most everyone around him tells him to. Which is why his romance with Kate is so fitting, for she, in her own different way, has also rejected what society demands of a grown-up of her age and gender, never marrying, having her own business, hoping and fighting for change in the world for the better against hope.

Borsos doesn’t seem terribly interested in the film’s plot as anything more than a reason for his characters to move, taking a leisurely, sometimes companionably humorous, stroll with Bill through his surroundings until the inevitable end that doesn’t turn out to be quite as inevitable. On the way, we circle around never quite expressed – because they are better demonstrated less abstractly -  ideas of freedom, responsibility, community and friendship, and see some beautifully photographed landscapes, without things ever becoming idyllic. The film sees and shows various injustices of early 20th Century Canada, presenting people like Bill, Kate, or even the local policeman Fernie (Timothy Webber), whom Bill befriends, as a quiet hope for ways out of misery.

Apart from its director’s eye for very pretty shots, as well as the very specific evocation of a time and place, the film lives on some wonderful performances. Farnsworth plays the part with the twinkling eyes of a man who has decided not to take on the parts of manhood he dislikes and keeps a little of the boy alive in himself, but also projects the melancholia of a man out of time, making Bill understandable and personable even though he never truly explains himself. The rest of the cast follow suit, giving the tale a warmth completely divorced from the kitsch it could easily have descended into.

For if The Grey Fox proves anything, it’s that you can evoke human warmth without falling into kitsch.