All the pre-release talk surrounding The Company You Keep focused on star/director Robert Redford’s kid glove treatment of ’60s radicals.
The film, based on the book by Neil Gordon, follows a group of former Weather Underground terrorists whose cover is finally blown after decades in hiding.
The film, opening in wider release this weekend, offers a tease of balance regarding these now-graying progressives and never collectively shouts, “we wuz right” regarding their traitorous attempts to end the war. Redford and co. refuse to give a dollop of dignity to journalism, a profession which bends over backwards to bring the star’s ideology to the masses.
The Company You Keep loses intensity at a time when the story’s screws should be tightening, but for a good hour Redford’s latest proves you can mesh liberal ideology with compelling storytelling and a script smarter than your average thriller.
Redford stars as Jim Grant, a kindly lawyer raising his daughter alone after the death of his wife. He’s as generic as he is kind to his kid, but that exterior hides a past dug up by an aggressive newspaper reporter. Ben Shepard (a terrific Shia LaBeouf) has been sniffing around the recent arrest of longtime fugitive Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon, chilling in only a few scenes), and he discovered Jim’s connection to the Weather Underground of yore.
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