Robert Redford's The Company You Keep

Movies…Robert Redford And Julie Christie In The Company You Keep

For some reason, Robert Redford, The Horse Whisperer, let this movie whisper into theaters this week. No trailers of the movie appeared anywhere. The movie was not promoted on Leno or Late Night With Anyone. The cast is a “who is who” in movies. They deserved better!!! The cast includes Julie Christie, Robert Redford (actor and director), Nick Nolte, Shia LeBeouf, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling, Terrence Howard, Chris Cooper, Sam Elliott, and Richard Jenkins. Someone should have been on television giving the movie a boost. They were not!!!

This political thriller is based on Neil Gordon’s book, The Company You Keep. The story looks at peaceful, anti-war protesters and those groups that think peaceful demonstration is not the answer. Redford and his friends of thirty years ago were in one or more of these groups. They are all hiding from decisions they have made in their prior lives. Some of these group members are in plain sight while others have completely new identities and the families and life that go with their thirty-year-older faces.

 It is strange how passionate anti-war demonstrators were in the 60’s and 70’s and how different they are now. Maybe, that is the central theme of the movie. Maybe parents trying to protect their children from their past lives is another issue highlighted in Gordon's storytelling.

With Redford and Christie in a movie, even if it were bad, I would have liked it. The movie was not an Academy Award winner. Yet, Redford uniquely framed faces and let them tell their stories of friendships and beliefs realized and those beliefs that were cast by the wayside for other reasons.

Movie lovers, watching this, will appreciate Redford’s storytelling craft, too.
Everyone in the theater liked the movie.
Maybe they, too, were Redford and Christie fans.

The critics have not been so kind.