Film legends Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones are golf course rivals who are forced to put aside their differences and team up to fend off mobsters in the new Ron Shelton comedy Just Getting Started. Rene Russo co-stars as the woman both Freeman and Jones are trying to impress with their competitive Alpha male antics.
Though both actors have been in flims for many decades, appearing in tons of great (and not-so-great) movies, Just Getting Started amazingly marks the first time Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones have worked together on-screen. Between them, Jones and Freeman have been nominated for a total of nine Oscars with each winning one apiece.
Related: Tommy Lee Jones Joins Brad Pitt in Ad Astra
Broad Green Pictures has dropped a new trailer for the comedy Just Getting Started. Freeman plays Duke Diver, manager of the luxury Palm Springs resort the Villa Capri. The free-spirited Diver is the undisputed king of the swinging resort, and definitely the favorite of all the ladies, until one day Tommy Lee Jones' Leo shows up. An ex-military man with as much swagger as Diver, Leo is quickly vying for the affections of Suzie (Russo), the newly-arrived woman who also happens to have caught Duke's eye.
This may sound like Grumpy Old Men in Palm Springs, but as the trailer shows, there's actually a twist: it turns out Duke is a former mob lawyer who has gone into witness protection, but now the mob is onto him and they're trying to rub him out. Wouldn't you know it, the only one who can protect Duke from the mobsters on his tail is his romantic and golf course rival Leo. With that, Grumpy Old Men turns into something more like Midnight Run.
The high-concept Just Getting Started may sound silly and derivative, and not exactly the Morgan Freeman-Tommy Lee Jones collaboration of our dreams, but with writer-director Ron Shelton at the helm there's a decent chance the film will turn out to be smarter and funnier than it seems. Shelton has been quiet in recent years, but once upon a time he was an Alpha dog in Hollywood, with his trio of classic sports comedies Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump and Tin Cup. Maybe Just Getting Started can be a bounce-back for Shelton, whose last feature film writer-director credit was for the disappointing (to say the least) Harrison Ford vehicle Hollywood Homicide.
Even if Just Getting Started ultimately doesn't measure up to Shelton's classics of the '80s and '90s, at least it affords us the chance to see screen icons Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones together on the screen. Tommy Lee Jones also has a role lined up in the new Brad Pitt sci-fi film Ad Astra, while the always-busy Morgan Freeman is set to appear as Trumbull in Angel Has Fallen (he was Speaker of the House in Olympus and VP in London so logically in the next film he'll be president).
NEXT: Ad Astra Sets a Release Date
Source: Broad Green Pictures
Key Release Dates
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Just Getting Started
Release Date:2017-12-08
