Sous surveillance

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.

Forty years ago, members of the Weathermen robbed a bank in Michigan, killing a woman in the event. The people involved scattered into the wind. Now Susan Sarandon, has been arrested by the FBI for her part in the murder, and the police are looking for her accomplice, Robert Redford. For the past quarter of a century he has been keeping his head down as a lawyer in Albany, New York, raising his daughter, mourning the death of his wife. Plus he wasn't at the robbery, but the only person who can prove that is Julie Christie, and he has no idea where she is.

As the movie progresses we see former campus radicals, and the staid individuals they have become. Judging by the quality of the actors, they are a minorly distinguished bunch: Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Stanley Tucci, Richard Jenkins, Sam Elliott.... it's the sort of cast that Sundance founder, director/producer Robert Redford could assemble for a meditation on right and wrong and issues about whether the ends justify the means, and what punishment can be added to four decades in hiding, terrified that you'll be sent to jail.... and wriggles out of the dilemma by making Redford innocent. Of course we're on his side! He's Robert Redford! He's a good dad! He didn't do anything!

Still, it's good to watch these expert thespians at work.

"When we revolt it's not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe." Frantz Fanon

In Robert Redford's The Company You keep, Jim Grant (Redford) is an attorney on the lam for participating in Weather Underground anti-Vietnam activities over 40 years ago. That a bank robbery resulted in the death of a guard has made the revolutionaries fugitives from murder charges.

This political thriller, in which the FBI has finally zeroed in on the robbers because Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) has decided to turn herself in, devolves into a formulaic chase with helicopters and frantic cell calls, but along the way has some engaging dialogue ("Yeah we all died. Some of us just came back." Donal Fitzgerald, played by Nick Nolte) often given in the repartee style of screwball comedy without the comedy.

I am most surprised at director Redford's political restraint, given his inclination to preach baldly in previous films and in his personal life. The Company You Keep smoothly combines the pacing of a race for survival with the consciousness of a moderate liberal trying to show the unglamorous effects of sins, like excessive ambition and murder, over a lifetime. In its favor the film does not overdo its sympathy for the kids of these radicals, although Brit Marling as Rebecca Osborne would make anyone cry over her, so innocent-looking she is.

While the film tends to emphasize the personal effects on lovers and families to the exclusion of the Weatherman history, it still is instructive about the radical movements decades ago. Although the theme of the ramifications of keeping a secret are parsed by Grant in a too-contrived monologue, the point is well taken, for each secret revealed adds another layer of punishment for all, even children.

If Redford weren't so wrapped up in nostalgia and stuck to the hard-core reasons for some very bright people's stupidity, this could have been a soaring achievement of documenting history in dramatic form. As it is, it's a smart thriller that has some lessons, both political and personal, for all the audience.

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.

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.