ROBERT REDFORD IN THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

Old radicals never die, they just clear their names

Robert Redford's new feature The Company You Keep is a fictional and crabwise look back at violent anti-war activism of the Vietnam War era from the point of view of some of its aging veterans formerly connected with the Weather Underground, still being hunted by the FBI. Redford stars in his own picture again, with an impressive array of supporting players; he's well connected. Susan Sarandon plays Sharon Solarz, long hiding in plain sight under a different identity, who gets arrested by the FBI and is accused of involvement in a failed Weathermen bank robbery in the early 1970's in which a guard was killed. This sets off the FBI searching for Jim Grant, real name Nick Sloan (Redford), who's been living for decades under an assumed identity and practicing as a lawyer in Albany, New York. Grant, his true identity ferreted out by aggressive and ambitious young Albany newspaper reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBoeuf), goes on the run to try to prove his innocence of involvement in the killing by finding former lover and cohort Mimi (Julie Christie). This film doesn't even try to capture what it is like for a family of radicals in perpetual hiding as does the touching and memorable Running on Empty, which contains one of River Phoenix's most memorable performances. The Company You Keep is partly a series of vignettes of people Grant meets with in his search to clear his name. Nick Nolte is a sort of drugged-out hippy, now a businessman. Richard Jenkins is a college professor, something like Bill Ayers, husband of Bernadette Dorn. Mimi, who has changed her identity six times, is still a revolutionary leftist, looking for a new radical cause. Chris Cooper isn't a radical but Redford's younger brother Daniel, who helps him hide and cares for Redford's young daughter Isabel (Jacqueline Evancho) while he does so. The director Redford has unlimited access to good actors, and so there's also Stanley Tucci, Anna Kendrick -- and Brendan Gleeson impressive in a key role.

If this is a history lesson for young people, it may not work too well, given how many of the characters are senior citizens and how tame the action is by contemporary standards. But the action here is more precipitous and lively than Redford's previous two liberal political lectures, Lions for Lambs and Conspiracy, which were talky and slow. The screenplay by Lem Dobbs from the novel by Neil Gordon juggles a suspenseful three-way storyline. The primary thread is of Grant, the former Weatherman on the run seeking to clear his name (Redford). In tandem with this is the journalistic procedural conducted by Ben Shepard, the eager young reporter looking for a big story and hard on the heels of Jim Grant. Third, the motor pushing all the other action is the FBI manhunt run by hotshot Special Agent Cornelius (Terrence Howard). The narrative ultimately revolves around the younger generation. Jim Grant wants to clear his name primarily for his young daughter Isabel. And there's another young woman called Rebecca (Brit Marling) whom Ben Shepard is interested in in more ways than one and whose role will emerge dramatically.

Is that the only reason these old events matter -- the need to clear one's slate for the good of one's children? Let me remind you that there are two good documentary films about the Weather Underground, the classic 1976 one in which Emile de Antonnio extensively interviews members who were even then hiding from the FBI, and the 2002 one by Sam Green, Bill Siegel and Carrie Lozano. As these will show, the actual facts and people are more fascinating and colorful than anything reported on in this movie. This movie takes a softhearted liberal and seemingly forgiving attitude to these radicals, without deeply enlightening us about their motives and actions. It doesn't menton that the Weatherman group did bombings, not bank robberies (that was the Symbionese Liberation Army). But this is another chance to see the legendary Julie Christie in a brief but memorable role, and gives LaBoeuf a chance at something more serious than Transformers or the young Wall Streeter who competes with Gordon Gekko. LaBoeuf is small, ferret-like, and a little bit generic, but he has a directness and energy that work for an ambitious reporter (who must spar with his boss, Stanley Tucci's editor). Redford becomes a brave loner revisiting his past. His role embodies his, and the movie's, desire to have it both ways, to be both radical and safe, because he has been one of the Weathermen, and yet we're to believe that not only is his slate clean, but his passing by a false identity is okay.

Ben is the sharp instrument, the FBI the blunt one. "Come on, people!" exhorts Agent Cornelius to his sluggish staff -- just like Chris Cooper as the CIA boss yelling at his Langley crew in the much more exciting exploration of government, lawlessness, and identity, the first Bourne movie. It's Ben who figures out that Grant's not going into deep cover but just hiding while he searches for something. Ben guides the audience along. Otherwise the action would be aimless and crude. He conveys the message that though print journalism may be fading, investigative reporting isn't. It's nice to think so. LaBoeuf's big spectacles link him with Hayden Christensen in Shattered Glass. He can't match the charisma of Jake Gyllenhaal in Zodiac or that film's epic investigative intensity. But I like the way LaBoeuf loops his specs over the lower buttonhole of his perpetual raincoat. He has some fun with his role and brings life to the film. The story's implication is that Ben will somehow be changed by his brush with radicalism, drawn to its charisma. By the end Ben is no longer so much watching Grant from he outside as rooting for him.

Accusations that Redford is over the hill and can't play this role are unfair. He jogs around manfully, appearing in excellent shape for a 76-year-old, though in truth the former Weathermen of today are younger than Redford by as much as a decade.

The Company You Keep is a mild and soulful sort of all star political thriller depicting a fading network that was once intense and strong. It explores old loyalties and the softening of radiclism, but has nothing definite to say about all that an doesn't really explore such issues as the virtues of nonviolent vs. violent protest. As an exploration of Baby Boomer political history it's a creditable effort, but what its revisiting of the Weather Underground, with the fudged details, adds up to is hard to say. Ultimately, as noted, it's more a chain of pretty good scenes and brief turns by good actors than a strong movie.

The Company You Keep, 125 mins., debuted at Venice and showed at Toronto Sept. 2012, Stockholm and other festivals, its US theatrical release (limited) 5 April 2013, UK release 7 June.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.