Touchstone and Beyond: A History of Disney’s “Tough Guys”

For this week’s edition of ‘To Touchstone and Beyond’ we look at the last big screen collaboration of legendary actors Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in the 1986 comedy, Tough Guys.

This is the story of aging criminals who serve their time and come out of prison to a world that has passed them by. Let the projector roll for Tough Guys.

The Movie

Harry Doyle and Archie Long, played by Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, are getting out of prison after serving thirty years for robbing a train in 1956. The world these two cons walk out to is a very different place. From spending all day in the same cell together, the two friends are forced to go their separate ways, with Harry moving into a nursing home, and Archie having to get a minimum wage job while living in a pauper hotel.

The streets that Harry and Archie roamed in 1956 no longer exist. As Harry tries to adjust to life in a nursing home, and Archie starts a new romance with a fitness instructor, neither men are happy. Their helpful and kind parole officer Richie, played by Dana Carvey, does his best to help them adapt to their new life, but the two aging cons struggle to find any meaning in their life.

Pursued by hitman Leon B. Little, played by Eli Wallach, who has waited thirty years to execute his hit on the two men, Harry and Archie spend most of their days avoiding the barrel of Little’s gun or the harassment of Deke Yablonski, played by Charles Durning, the cop who arrested the pair thirty years before.

Life just isn’t what Harry and Archie expected when they walked out of prison. The two men concoct a plan to bring meaning to their lives. The Sunliner, the train they robbed thirty years before, is on it’s final run, and Harry and Archie are going to hijack the train and drive it all the way to Mexico.

Even though the railroad tracks end before the border with Mexico, Harry and Archie are willing to risk their lives just to say they made it.

The Best Moments on Screen

Tough Guys is a film that celebrates Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. These acting icons get to share the screen for one more time that shows the two men as tough guys. The chemistry between the two is amazing, and even though they are at the twilight of their career when Lancaster and Douglas share the screen you can’t help but follow them. Their personalities and machismo make the audience root for them, even though they are crooks.

The humor throughout the film still holds up today. There are many genuine funny moments in the film which is helped by the skill and delivery of Lancaster, Douglas, and Eli Wallach.

Tough Guys plays on the familiar ‘fish out of water’ story arc that Lancaster and Douglas enter when the film starts. The opening credits show us the snapshot of life for Harry and Archie in 1956. We get a brief glimpse of what life was like for our two leading men, and the world they walk out to in their vintage suits and fedoras, is not the world they once knew.

 

I loved how restrained Dana Carvey was as Richie Evans. Instead of being an off the wall character, Richie is in awe of the two legendary robbers Harry and Archie, much like what Carvey probably felt like working with Lancaster and Douglas. One cannot help but see the joy Carvey had at being on set with these two acting icons while just starting his career.

The Worst Moments on Screen

Archie ends up at their favorite bar, only to discover that the old crooks prized watering hole, is now a gay bar. I feel like had this movie been filmed today, the scene would have been cut, or the approach to the scene with Douglas in the bar would have been different. It just doesn’t play well today.

Film Facts

See It/Skip It?

See It! Tough Guys is a funny movie that still holds up today. Having seen Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in Seven Days in May, and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, I have always enjoyed these two titans of the silver screen, and they don’t disappoint in Tough Guys. At the time of the film’s release, famed critic Roger Ebert lambasted the film for having Lancaster and Douglas show, “their utter cool and total confidence in the face of all dangers. Since they waltz through everything, there’s no suspense. Since their victories seem inevitable, they generate no joy.”

I must disagree with Mr. Ebert. While Tough Guys shows two very cool individuals in the form of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, their characters experience few victories. The scene where we see Lancaster’s Harry Doyle sitting in the dinning hall of his nursing home just after being released from prison is one of the most painful moments of the film. Harry Doyle is an old man in a nursing home with scheduled mealtimes and bedtimes. Harry has just moved from one prison to another.

I wasn’t sure about the victories that Ebert speaks of. While Harry and Archie do beat up some thugs that accost them on the street and foil a bank robbery, Harry and Archie are looking for meaning in their lives, and stealing a train is the only thing they can find. An ominous prediction from a guard at the start of the film, comes true for Harry and Archie. They end up reoffending. Is that a victory? Watch Tough Guys and decide for yourself. No matter what you think of the film, you will love seeing Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas on screen making the criminal life look cool.

Next week ‘To Touchstone and Beyond’ dives into the world of politics with Hollywood Pictures political comedy, The Distinguished Gentlemen.

Director: Jeff Kanew

Production Company: Touchstone Pictures

Principal Cast:

Release Date: October 3, 1986

Budget: $10 Million

Box Office Gross Domestic = $21,458,229