Thelma is a film which wears its cinematic influences on its sleeve, as early on we see our protagonist Thelma (June Squibb) watching Mission Impossible: Fallout with her grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger) on an old fat backed television.
Much like Cruise’s alter-ego Ethan hunt, Thelma is about to be faced with her own impossible mission when con artists, pretending to be her grandson in need of help, successfully scam her for $10,000. Angered by this injustice, and spurred on the pitying sorrow of her family, Thelma does not take this lying down. She recruits her old, somewhat, friend Ben (Richard Roundtree) and embarks on adventure to get the money back. What follows is a proper espionage caper, which just so happens to replace globetrotting for the suburban streets of Los Angeles, supercars for mobility scooters, and rooftop parkour for the travails of manoeuvring through an antique lamp store.
This genre mashup works so well because writer-director Josh Margolin clearly understands the language and rhythm of the action movie, and is able successfully to transpose it onto this small scale story. Whether Thelma is racing a mobility scooter through a care home, or rolling across a bed, Margolin’s use of camera placement and editing, helped along by a nifty score from composer Nick Chuba, constructs these sequences with a real tension and momentum. In an odd way the stakes feel ramped up from a Mission Impossible entry, as Tom Cruise, a man of seemingly mythic invulnerability, is replaced with the frailty of a 94-year-old woman. The film is also wonderfully comedic and self-aware, and clearly owes an equal debt to Cruise’s silent era forbearers of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
For all its OAP theatricality, the film also contains more serious undertones as a commentary on the vulnerability of our elderly and those who would seek to exploit them. The film’s scam is taken almost verbatim from one Margolin’s own grandmother, who is also called Thelma and appears briefly during the end-credits, nearly fell for before he stepped in to stop it. The disorienting and disheartening impact that falling for these scams can have is powerfully evoked, while the inspired casting of Malcom MacDowell as one of the scammers highlights its sinisterness.
There is also a heartwarming evocation on the frustrations of family, as we see Daniel struggling with his quarter-life crisis and the endearing madness of his overbearing parents, played by Parker Posey and Clark Gregg. What shines through most of all though, and what makes Thelma such a joyous watch, is the deep affection that Margolin feels for his own grandmother. The film is the cinematic equivalent of a cup of tea accompanied with a shot of whiskey just to liven things up a bit, or maybe an action film in a snug knitted cardigan.