Above, a scene from “A Night in Old Mexico.” (Photo credit: Phase 4 Films)

By Roger Moore
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

In his latest film, “A Night in Old Mexico,” Robert Duvall rages, as the poet put it, “against the dying of the light.”

As Red, a crusty old rancher who has lost his land, who has no close family left and is headed for a retirement community, Duvall cusses, complains and lassos the grandson he’s never met (Jeremy Irvine) for one last romp across the border. He’s still got “pleasures to go,” he insists. Those include driving, drinking, dancing and raising a little hell in Old Mexico.
Not unlike the actor himself.

“Yeah, we’ve got a little in common,” he laughs. “But my ‘pleasures to go’ these days are work, tango and riding.

“I love gettin’ the girl, a young woman, one last time. Mighty pretty, wonderful actress.” (Angie Cepeda, playing a stripper / singer who tags along with the boys.)

He gets to speak some of the tastiest, funniest dialogue of his long career, and trot out a few vintage pick-up lines.
“Better an old man’s darlin’ than a young man’s slave,” Duvall recites. “I love that.”

He even got to see a part of Texas he’d never visited.

“Brownsville … That was another good reason to make this one, just to see more of the country. Supposed to be the most corrupt town in Texas. Hah-hah. That’s saying something, right? But I don’t know, I don’t know.”

He chuckles. At 83, the Oscar-winning screen legend takes his jokes and his delights where he can find them. Some are at home, in Virginia’s horse country, with his gorgeous tango-dancing Argentine wife, Luciana Pedraza, his co-star in 2002’s “Assassination Tango.”

“I still tango. A man’s got to have his hobbies.”

He’s having a busy year in front of the camera. “A Night in Old Mexico” is the first film he’s in this year.

“We’ve been trying to get this movie made for 30 years, ever since ‘Lonesome Dove.’ Red is sort of descended from Gus McRae from ‘Lonesome Dove,’ I figure. Same screenwriter (William D. Wittliff adapted Larry McMurty’s novel for the TV miniseries). He kept at it, the whole time we were trying to get this made, polishing the script and polishing it. Some great lines in that thing, great lines.

“I brought in a little to it — improvising. Not much, though. It’s that good. ‘Am I right, or Amarillo?’”

With a Spanish director and Spanish crew, they had 23 days to shoot “Old Mexico,” which Duvall confesses is “Kind of an old fashioned story, except for maybe the language in it … Love the idea of this ‘last hurrah’ kind of tale. This guy’s all Texas, that’s for sure. A little of that Texas swagger, that sense of self-reliance. A little hell-raiser. Go out with your boots on, all that.”

Duvall’s screen appearances have been further apart in recent years, but the reviews are as glowing as ever, with Variety opining that he is “perfectly cast as a robustly cantankerous” Texan on a cantina bender south of the border.

Duvall has “The Judge,” co-starring Robert Downey Jr. coming in the fall, which is about the time he’ll start production on another film, a movie that will have him on horseback.

“Oh, I still ride,” he says. “But when I do, it’s got to be a horse that’s pretty much bomb-proof. I have one a fellow down the road lets me ride who’s bomb-proof. I can ride, but I don’t need any surprises. No sir. Not from the horse, not at my age.

“I’ve got a movie coming up, had to find another bomb-proof horse for that one. Test him out, a little, before I even get on it.”