THE COMPANY YOU KEEP directed by Robert Redford (USA, 2012)
It’s a measure of how unpolitical most American blockbusters are that this movie practically counts as a radical drama. It begins with archive footage of the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) and this left-wing group’s vain attempts to counter injustice, greed and warmongering in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Weathermen’s opposition to US military involvement in Vietnam was such a central part of their protest that it all but fizzled out when the war ended.
By choosing to direct an adaptation of Neil Gordon’s novel, Robert Redford is able to give work to fellow ageing actors like Julie Christie, Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon. All these play ex-WUO activists. Redford is Nick Sloan, a widower and single dad hiding under a new identity as lawyer Jim Grant.
A younger upstart is Shia LaBeouf who plays Ben Shepherd, an increasingly irritating local reporter on the trail of a massive scoop who quickly blows Sloan’s cover. Using old school journalist methods like trailing through dusty archives, door-stepping and bribery he effortlessly joins the dots from A to B to C in a few days which begs the question as to why it took the FBI three decades before catching up with these fugitives. The incentive was quite high since the charge against them is the murder of a security officer during a botched bank robbery. Continue reading
