The Company You Keep

The first thing I would like to say about this film is that it kept me entertained for two hours without once glancing at the clock.This in itself is no mean achievement in an age where many movies are unnecessary long. Hollywood obviously believes length is important if you want to be successful. Entertaining as it was I'm not so sure it was plot that kept me watching as much as the parade of veteran actors on display. A rather disparaging comment and maybe one that should have been reserved for the confusing historical context of the storyline itself. Being of an age that remembers the activities of the Weather Underground I was under the impression that their acts of terrorism had ceased by the time the Vietnam peace agreement was signed in 1973 since the Vietnam War had been the organisation's raison d'etre but in this film the Weather Men are still on a mission as we approach 1980. The film also has amusing parallels with another piece of Redford left-wing theatre, 'The Way we were'. In this 1973 film the Redford character, a talented screen writer, backs away from confrontation with the Communist witch-hunt in Hollywood and seeks respectability by compromising his ability and forsaking the woman he loves in the process. His 2012 alta ego also loses his passion for the cause and sacrifices love and a daughter by walking away, 'I grew up'. In both films Redford played people much younger than himself. I'm not sure what this says about Robert Redford but I think my wife summed it up when she remarked after watching an early scene in 'Company, 'He's not the father of that young girl, is he?' Exactly, a 75 year old unconvincingly playing somebody twenty years younger while in 1973 film he was a 36 year college student! Anyway,enough of Redford who otherwise gives a competent performance. It was good to see Julie Christie again and who along with Nick Nolte, Susan Sarandon and Chris Cooper and still capable of teaching the young pretenders a thing or two. All in all and enjoyable and nostalgic evening's viewing.

The acting by a stream of well known faces who were young I when I was also young are very good, and being a similar age as them I could relate to some of what they were experiencing in the story. I listened to a review on the radio criticising the movie because of the difficulty of enjoying watching people past their prime in a suspense movie. Maybe the reviewer should have stuck to the Bourne movies to get their kicks.

Well age has nothing to do with it but maturity certainly does. The appealing theme here is that we don't leave our past so far behind us that it doesn't exert any major influence on us years later. In fact the more years that pass the more significant the past can become. I suggest you don't be put off by the negativity of what some others say and see the movie.

I AM CONVINCED THE CONSERVATIVE PRESS MISSED THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE MOVIE.

While I'm totally conservative, the talking heads that trashed this film blew it completely.

This film does not glorify terrorism. Quite the opposite. It shows how a person can cross the line from being an "activist" to being a felon/terrorist. It is sort of a retrospective of an activist's two lives - one he abandoned once he crossed the line, the other, the stolen life he built afterward.

There is a price one pays to the public through the court system. There is also a private price, or a personal price one also pays. In both cases,the focus is more on the private price he foisted off on loved ones to avoid paying his public price for his acts.

(The reader must understand that Sloan was guilty of some felony activities, but NOT the murder of the bank guard. His crimes, if caught, were worth some jail time, but not a life sentence for murder.)

People should watch this just so they could consider the idea that actions they might start can easily spin out of control, leaving them with consequences they might be forced to live with for the rest of their life, and MORE IMPORTANTLY, exact an even worse price upon all their loved ones.

This is a VERY tightly packed movie, hardly a word that isn't important to the development of the plot. Watch it closely.

This movie does need a bit more tension and rage at one particular point, but that's about the biggest flaw I saw.

Just so you know, Redford, 76, is playing the role of a late 60 year-old, and there are very important reasons why he has a young daughter. Now, it is up to you to see this film and figure out why.

By the way, this movie has a lot of great talent in it, and they each do very well for themselves and the presentation of the movie's theme. There are 14 class act performers, plus one. This would be a hard cast to play against, but "plus one" did a super job in her first movie role.

There's a lot to think about after watching Robert Redford's movie, 'The Company You Keep', although sadly, some of the ideas are provoked by their absence in the film, rather than their presence. The story is based on the real life activities of the Weather Underground, a radical left- wing organisation of then1970s; in this story, the police are finally closing in on the remnants of the gang (who are still wanted, among other things, for murder) after over 30 years. It's a good premise, and the movie is unfashionably sympathetic to its protagonists, respecting their idealism whatever wrong they did. Yet in some way it's the wrong kind of sympathy: the individuals are shown as parents, grandparents, living conventional lives, not completely rejected their own past but nonetheless no longer people one could imagine committing such acts. I think there's an interesting subject: what conventionally speaking might be considered defects would drive someone to ignore their own immediate interests for the sake of a cause (and ultimately drive them beyond mere idealism to take a Raskolnikovian view that their cause gives them the right to decide who lives and who dies). The idea of idealism as a social disease (because society depends on its members not asking too many questions) is an obvious and interesting question to raise in this film; but instead we see a group so well-socially adjusted that it's hard to believe in any of them as trigger-pullers, even in a former life.

There's a second strand to the film about a journalistic investigation of one of the suspects. Redford, of course, acted in one the great journalistic movies ('All the President's Men') and this one can't hold a candle to that; the story is obvious and feels basically unnecessary (except, presumably, that you can't get a film made these days unless you have some actors in it under the age of 30). I still quite liked the movie, but overall, it's a little too kind on the nature of journalists, terrorists and society alike; and fundamentally cuddly where it should be disconcerting.

Although not one of Redford's best, "The Company You Keep" is still way better than the majority of so called thriller/dramas produced these days in my humble opinion...excellent acting all round, Redford is good as usual (if looking a little too old maybe for this role) and the supporting cast (Cooper, Tucci, Christie and Gleeson in particular) are a credit as well. Whilst there are not a lot of twists and surprises that you can't see coming, it's the way the story is told and unfolds, and it makes you think about your ideals and sacrifices and plotted that really counts. Although I'm a Brit in my 40's and the material is not familiar to myself at all I really enjoyed the ride. Solid, if not spectacular, but definitely worth the time to view.