MOVIE: The Company You Keep

The Company You Keep: a Robert Redford film.  The movie opens with TV news pictures from the late ‘60s and a short history lesson about the Weather Underground.  An appropriate beginning as many viewers are not going to understand the movie if they have no remembrance of how part of the anti-Vietnam war protest went violent.  This movie, which takes place in the present, is about individuals who were active participants in a Weather Underground incident and who then went underground.  Robert Redford plays the lead character, Nick Sloan.  He also directed the film.  After going underground, Sloan resurfaces as a public interest lawyer in Albany, NY.   His fabricated persona becomes suspect after the character played by Susan Sarandon is arrested.  This occurs at the beginning of the film.  The Sarandon character, who has decided to surrender, is instead arrested by the FBI.  The lead FBI agent is played by Terrence Howard.  The movie is not FBI friendly and Howard’s performance is not helpful.   Sloan is flushed out by a young newspaper reporter, Ben Shepard, played by Shia LeBeouf.  The film moves between how the reporter discovers what three decades of FBI work had not, and Redford on the run.  Turns out that some of the old radicals had maintained communication channels over the past 30 years.  It is these minor roles that make this film an enjoyable viewing experience.  Nick Nolte is not on screen very long but he dominates for his duration.  Julie Christie was Redford’s girlfriend in the day and he is traveling the country to find her because she is the one who knows the true story regarding the incident that forced Redford to recreate himself.  Christie is now a drug runner living in Northern California with Mac, played by Sam Elliot.  Christie does not look her 71 years and she remains excellent.  We also have actors Richard Jenkins and Stephen Root playing other members of the University of Michigan group.  Stanley Tucci plays the newspaper editor and Ben Shepard’s boss.  The film cast is excellent.  As to the storyline, I had mixed emotions after the recent events in Boston.  I bet if you asked most Americans to name the most successful organization in planting bombs in American history, they would not guess Weather Underground; in this instance, my reference to “success” relates to number of incidents and not death count.  Since I’m old enough to have been in college when much of what led to the formation of the Weather Underground occurred, I remember the incidents that are the understory for this movie.  I also recall that the acts of the Underground were not the modern indiscriminate bombings by religious zealots.   Still, a bomb is a bomb is a bomb.  The fact that the movie made me think is another plus to go with the excellent acting.  The movie kept my attention for the 125 minutes.  Unfortunately, Redford could not resist a Hollywood ending to his film.  I would have preferred the film ending about 5 minutes earlier than it does.  I will place at the end of my blog what should have been the closing scene.  One additional comment: the script is weak and most of the characters, despite the excellent acting, are too one dimensional.  Nolte and Sarandon were notable exceptions and more screen time for them would have been a plus.  Redford’s time as a lead actor has passed. 

POSTSCRIPT ON MOVIE ENDING:   Redford and Christie meet at a cabin in Upper Minnesota.  The FBI had tracked Redford character but has no idea Christie is present. They run from the cabin in opposite directions and Christie makes it to a lake wharf where a small boat is present.  Then there is a long shot of the boat in the lake.   I would have ented the movie with that scene.