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For nearly 50 years, Robert Redford has been on quest to prove he is more than a golden boy matinee idol.

Of course, Redford has succeeded in spectacular fashion, starring in such classics as "The Candidate," " Three Days of the Condor " and " All the President's Men "; winning the Oscar for directing " Ordinary People " (somehow besting Martin Scorsese and " Raging Bull "), and founding the Sundance Film Festival.

He is legend. The notion Redford became a star only because of his looks is as ludicrous as someone saying Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a great basketball player only because of his height.

Yet like so many great stars before him, Redford, now 76, steadfastly refuses to go gently into that good grandfatherhood. In "The Company You Keep," he looks and moves like a really fit, handsome 76-year-old — a real distraction, given he's playing a former 1970s radical who now has an 11-year-old daughter and is living a quiet life under an assumed name.

OK, sure, guys in their 60s become fathers — but the timeline of "The Company You Keep" tells us Nick Sloan (Redford) is a former member of the Weather Underground wanted for his part in a bank robbery from some 30 years ago in which a security guard was killed. So was Sloan in his mid-40s at the time — or are we supposed to believe he's about 60 now?

This is but one of the distractions in "The Company You Keep" that kept me at a distance. Despite Redford's sure-handed (but typically stolid) direction, an intriguing premise and a cast filled with top-line talent both veteran and relatively new, nearly every scene had me asking questions about what just transpired when I should have been absorbing what was happening next.

In casting almost too perfect, Susan Sarandon plays Sharon Solarz, a Vermont housewife who waves goodbye to her husband and teenage children, and prepares herself to be arrested for her part in that long-ago bank robbery. Why now? Her motivation isn't entirely clear. When Solarz grants a jailhouse interview to hungry young reporter Ben Shepard ( Shia LeBeouf ), she justifies/rationalizes the Weather Underground's use of violence, while he just sits there lapping it up. It's up to an FBI agent ( Anna Kendrick ) to call bull---- and tell Ben she found Solarz's speech offensive. (She's right.)

Meanwhile, the walls are closing in on Nick and other members of the Underground, including a grizzled old radical named Donal ( Nick Nolte ) and Mimi ( Julie Christie ), Nick's former lover, who's still beautiful and still full of righteous "Fight the Power" radicalism.

The top-heavy casting almost works against the story, despite the talents of all involved. Hey, there's Chris Cooper as Nick's brother, whom he hasn't seen in 20 years! Look, Richard Jenkins as another former Weatherman, now teaching! And hey, Stanley Tucci as the obligatory "In my office, now!" newspaper editor, and Terrence Howard as the determined FBI investigator! And sure enough, that's gravel-voiced Sam Elliott as yet another former radical. It's almost an upset we don't get Christopher Walken as the Guy Who Made the Bombs or Jane Fonda as the War Protester.

When Nick finds Mimi in a remote cabin, "The Company You Keep" assumes the tone of a bittersweet romance. Their exchanges are just…perfect. Nolte provides comic relief, and Jenkins is utterly believable as Jed, the professor who reluctantly assists Nick and then tells him, "Please believe me when I say I hope I never see you again."

It's difficult to believe that Shepard, the small-time, ethically challenged, marginally talented newspaper reporter, is able to find so many answers that eluded the FBI for decades. As "The Company You Keep" adds more characters and ladles on the soap-opera twists, we get further and further away from those early, riveting scenes with Sarandon (who disappears from the movie) and other Weather people now living law-abiding lives under assumed names.

As for Nick Sloan, he's the one ex-Weatherman character we don't believe as a former activist so committed to the cause he would engage in acts of domestic terrorism on American soil. Of course a lot of real-life radicals from the 1960 and 1970s served their time, expressed their regrets and then created productive, peaceful lives for themselves. (Some haven't apologized enough or been punished enough to suit everyone.) But this community-oriented, tousle-haired senior citizen who likes to go for morning runs and dotes on his young daughter? THIS guy was running with outlaw rebels who believed such acts as bombing government buildings and robbing banks and killing innocent family men such as that security guard were justifiable?

Neither the script nor Redford's performance ever leads us to believe he was ever the kind of guy who would keep that kind of company, even back in the day. 

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Film credits.

The Company You Keep (2013)

Rated R language

157 minutes

Robert Redford as Jim Grant

Shia LaBeouf as Ben Shepard

Julie Christie as Mimi Lurie

Anna Kendrick as Diana

Stanley Tucci as Ray Fuller

Sam Elliott as Mac McLeod

Susan Sarandon as Sharon Solarz

• Robert Redford
• Neil Gordon

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Movie Reviews

Robert redford keeps revolutionary'company'.

Mark Jenkins

Jim (Robert Redford) must flee with his daughter, Isabel (Jackie Evancho), to the scene of a past crime in order to avoid a probing amateur reporter. Doane Gregory/Sony Pictures Classics hide caption

The Company You Keep

• Director: Robert Redford
• Genre: Drama
• Running Time: 125 minutes

Rated R for language

With: Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling

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Crisp in execution and classic in ambiance, The Company You Keep is star Robert Redford's most persuasive directorial work since 1994's Quiz Show . It's a pleasure to watch, even if the payoff is rather less substantial than the backstory.

The latter is established by an opening flurry of real and simulated TV news clips about the Weather Underground, the early-1970s leftist group. In this fictionalization, three former members are still wanted for a Michigan bank robbery. (The movie's reference to events of "30 years ago" suggests that this invented crime was inspired by a bloody 1981 armored-truck heist that's been called the Weather Underground's final act.)

One of the fugitives, now living quietly with her family in Vermont, is ready to turn herself in. After Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) is booked by an FBI agent (Terrence Howard), upstate New York lawyer Jim Grant (Redford) is asked to represent her.

He says no, but a link has been implied. Unshaven and inexperienced Albany newspaper reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) begins to investigate Jim, and comes to believe he's actually Nick Sloan, who is also wanted in the robbery.

Jim, a recent widower, doesn't appreciate Ben's questions. He takes his 11-year-old daughter (Jacqueline Evancho) to New York City, where his brother (Chris Cooper) lives. Deftly eluding the FBI, Jim then heads to Michigan.

Belligerent Ben clashes with his editor (Stanley Tucci), as well as an ex-girlfriend (Anna Kendrick) who is now an FBI agent, and with Sharon herself, whose revolutionary instincts he mocks as "groovy." Yet the reporter comes to have grudging respect for Jim, and intuits that the runaway is seeking something other than sanctuary.

On his quest, Jim reconnects with onetime zealots who are wary but friendly, such as a maverick lumberyard owner (Nick Nolte), and others who are less welcoming, notably a paranoid college professor (Richard Jenkins). Eventually, word gets to the person Jim seeks to contact: his former lover (Julie Christie), now engaged in a different sort of underground operation with her current beau (Sam Elliott).

Rebecca (Brit Marling) is an unwilling and confused source for a brash young reporter (Shia LaBeouf) as he digs for the truth behind a violent unsolved 1970s bank heist in Michigan. Doane Gregory/Sony Pictures Classics hide caption

Rebecca (Brit Marling) is an unwilling and confused source for a brash young reporter (Shia LaBeouf) as he digs for the truth behind a violent unsolved 1970s bank heist in Michigan.

Ben also travels to Michigan, tracking the story from a different direction. He interviews a retired police officer (Brendan Gleeson) who worked on the bank-robbery case. Ben also pursues the ex-cop's daughter (Brit Marling), a law student who initially thinks the reporter has a romantic interest in her — perhaps because he sort of does.

A high-profile cast like this one can be a distraction, but Redford neatly uses the familiar faces to conjure the '70s. Old photos of some of them, including Redford with a mustache that can only be called groovy, instantly evoke the era. The technique recalls The Limey , a '90s film that used '60s footage of star Terence Stamp — and was scripted by Lem Dobbs, who also wrote this movie.

Films that take '70s revolutionaries seriously, common in Europe, are rare in the U.S. So it's no surprise when the personal ultimately trumps the political. The movie doesn't entirely dodge New Left views: Sarandon does a fine job with a speech in which Sharon expresses her willingness to do it all again , but "smarter."

But Sharon abandoned the clandestine life because of her kids, and Redford's '70s flashback ultimately becomes — like such predecessors as Running on Empty and German director Christian Petzold's The State I Am In — a parenting parable. There's even a hint of the stolen-kid thriller Gone Baby Gone in a fairly predictable plot twist.

Before settling into such comfortable territory, however, the movie is propulsive and involving. If The Company You Keep is far from radical, it's pretty audacious by the standards of counterrevolutionary Hollywood.

The Company You Keep Review

Radically old school thriller..

With its aging cast and old-school feel, The Company You Keep will likely satisfy a more mature audience who can connect with the radicalism of the '60s and '70s, who still enjoy Robert Redford, and mourn the impending ‘death’ of newspaper journalism. The acting is superb, the dialogue is dense, and Redford’s direction is composed.

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The Company You Keep Movie Review

In The Company You Keep , Robert Redford plays a former member of the Weather Underground who was involved in a bank robbery that ended in tragic violence. For more than 30 years he’s been hiding out, living under an assumed identity as an activist lawyer in upstate New York. But when one of his former comrades (Susan Sarandon) turns herself in, his cover is blown, and he goes on the run looking up other hidden ex-members of the radical fringe. One (Richard Jenkins) is a professor; one (Julie Christie) is an unrepentant ideologue (she and Redford had a daughter, whom they abandoned); and one, played by — God bless him — a frizzy-white-haired, raspier-than-ever Nick Nolte, actually seems like a person who came out of the 1960s.

Aside from Nolte, just about everyone in The Company You Keep is earnestly high-minded and noble. The movie accepts that these people went to extremes to stop a war. It never considers that many members of the Weather Underground were driven by a nihilistic rage that became an end unto itself. Redford, who directed, has constructed the film as a meditation on one version of lost boomer dreams. Shia LaBeouf, who appears to be on hand to prove that a movie with a crusading newspaper reporter can still exist, perks up his scenes, and Redford acts with his usual hyperalert, placid control. (It’s hard to believe the man he’s playing ever wanted to bring down the system.) The Company You Keep chews on issues of violence in a muffled way, but restraint is not the quality this story was calling for. C+

Film Review: ‘The Company You Keep’

Robert Redford's unabashedly heartfelt but competent tribute to 1960s idealism won't spark riots at the box office

By Leslie Felperin

Leslie Felperin

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“Old hippies never die, they just smell that way,” bumperstickers used to say, but the dropouts largely come up smelling like roses in “ The Company You Keep,” Robert Redford ‘s unabashedly heartfelt but competent tribute to 1960s idealism. Cannily casting eminent baby-boomer thesps — including Julie Christie , who was a poster kid for the counterculture — against young name actors like Shia LaBeouf, the pic attempts to bridge the generation gap with this story of a Weather Underground fugitive on the lam, played by Redford himself. Although more engaging than the helmer’s last few films, “Company” won’t spark riots at the box office.

A quick opening montage explains for the benefit of those under 40 what the Weather Underground was: a terrorist network committed to the violent overthrow of the U.S. government that broke away in the late 1960s from radical but pacifist org, Students for a Democratic Society. Skillfully faked fictional footage woven in with real archival material recounts how several Weathermen went into hiding after killing a security guard during a bank robbery in Michigan.

In contempo upstate New York, housewife Sharon Solarz ( Susan Sarandon ), one of those involved in the ill-fated Michigan robbery, turns herself in to the FBI after nearly 30 years of living under a false identity. Ambitious young reporter Ben Shepard (LaBeouf) starts digging around the story, and turns up evidence that local nice-guy lawyer and recently widowed single parent Jim Grant (Redford) was also part of Solarz’s cell back in the day. Old photos of Redford, sporting a Sundance Kid moustache, and Sarandon in her ingenue phase are cunningly photoshopped to make mugshots for Most Wanted posters, coyly evoking the thesps’ glory days as pin-ups.

Deftly shaking off surveillance by FBI field officers ( Terrence Howard , Anna Kendrick), Grant deposits his young daughter Isabel (Jacqueline Evancho) with his brother Daniel ( Chris Cooper ) for safekeeping, and hits the road. His mission is to track down former g.f. Mimi (Christie), the cell’s most passionate firebrand, who unlike Jim and nearly all the others never settled down and went straight. On hearing via the underground network that Jim’s looking for her, she wistfully recalls to her current beau ( Sam Elliott ) that’s she’s walked away from six different lives over the years, an experience that’s seemingly left her hardened and unsentimental.

While nostalgia is otherwise generally the order of the day here, it’s not entirely filtered through rose-colored granny glasses, and the pic’s colorful, almost-wastefully impressive cast limns a sociologically convincing rogue’s gallery of reformed revolutionaries — some turned organic farmer, like the one played by Stephen Root (refreshingly cast against usual nerdy type); or university professor ( Richard Jenkins ), putting Franz Fanon on the reading list; or small businessman, like Nick Nolte’s cleaned-up acid casualty. The last, a brief but memorable turn, harks pleasingly back to Nolte’s blasted ‘Nam vet in “Who’ll Stop the Rain.”

Even screenwriter Lem Dobbs , adapting Neil Gordon’s novel here, has something of track record with this sort of material, having written Steven Soderbergh’s “The Limey” (1999), another tale about ’60s survivors haunted by its thesps’ own filmographies. Like that film, all plot roads lead to a young woman whose honor must be defended, in this case Brit Marling ‘s smart love-interest law student, who upstages LaBeouf.

“ The Company You Keep ” is nowhere near as formally audacious as Soderbergh’s film, but in its stolid, old-fashioned way, it satisfies an appetite, especially among mature auds, for dialogue- and character-driven drama that gets into issues without getting too bogged down in verbiage (unlike Redford’s recent “Lions for Lambs” or “ The Conspirator “).

There is something undeniably compelling, perhaps even romantic, about America’s ’60s radicals and the compromises they did or didn’t make, a subject underexplored in Hollywood cinema apart from honorable exceptions like Sidney Lumet’s “Running on Empty” (1988) and a few others. The French, meanwhile, have almost completely monopolized radical chic nostalgia, as seen in another Venice fest entry, Olivier Assayas’ “Something in the Air.”

Craft contributions are fine.

The Company You Keep

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (noncompeting), Sept. 5, 2012. Running time: 121 MIN.

A Sony Pictures Classics release of a Voltage Pictures presentation of a Voltage Pictures/Wildwood Enterprises production, in association with Film Capital Europe Funds, Soundford Limited, Picture Perfect Corp. (International sales: Voltage Pictures, Los Angeles.) Produced by Nicolas Chartier, Robert Redford, Bill Holderman. Executive producers, Craig J. Flores, Shawn Williamson.

Directed by Robert Redford. Screenplay, Lem Dobbs, based on a novel by Neil Gordon. Camera (Technicolor, widescreen, HD), Adriano Goldman; editor, Mark Day; music, Cliff Martinez ; production designer, Laurence Bennett; art director, Jeremy Stanbridge; set decorator, Carol Lavallee; costume designer, Karen Matthews; sound (Dolby Digital/Datasat), Chris Duesterdiek; sound designer, Steve Boeddeker; supervising sound editors, Richard Hymns, Dan Laurie; re-recording mixers, Juan Peralta, Steve Boeddeker; visual effects supervisor, Adam Stern; visual effects, Artifex Studios, the VFX Cloud, Lola; stunt coordinator, Danny Virtue; associate producer, Jonathan Shore; assistant director, Richard Graves; casting, Avy Kaufman.

Cast: Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Terrence Howard, Stanley Tucci, Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick, Brendan Gleeson, Brit Marling, Sam Elliott, Stephen Root, Jacqueline Evancho.

• Production: A Sony Pictures Classic release of a Voltage Pictures presentation of a Voltage Pictures/Wildwood Enterprises production, in association with Film Capital Europe Funds, Soundford Limited, Picture Perfect Corp. (International sales: Voltage Pictures, Los Angeles.) Produced by Nicolas Chartier, Robert Redford, Bill Holderman. Executive producers, Craig J. Flores, Shawn Williamson. Directed by Robert Redford. Screenplay, Lem Dobbs, based on a novel by Neil Gordon.
• Crew: Camera (Technicolor, widescreen, HD), Adriano Goldman; editor, Mark Day; music, Cliff Martinez; production designer, Laurence Bennett; art director, Jeremy Stanbridge; set decorator, Carol Lavallee; costume designer, Karen Matthews; sound (Dolby Digital/Datasat), Chris Duesterdiek; sound designer, Steve Boeddeker; supervising sound editors, Richard Hymns, Dan Laurie; re-recording mixers, Juan Peralta, Steve Boeddeker; visual effects supervisor, Adam Stern; visual effects, Artifex Studios, the VFX Cloud, Lola; stunt coordinator, Danny Virtue; associate producer, Jonathan Shore; assistant director, Richard Graves; casting, Avy Kaufman. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (noncompeting), Sept. 5, 2012. Running time: 121 MIN.
• With: Jim Grant - Robert Redford Ben Shepard - Shia LaBeouf Mimi Lurie - Julie Christie Sharon Solarz - Susan Sarandon Donal Fitzgerald - Nick Nolte Daniel Sloan - Chris Cooper FBI Agent Cornelius - Terrence Howard Ray Fuller - Stanley Tucci Jed Lewis - Richard Jenkins Diana - Anna Kendrick Henry Osborne - Brendan Gleeson Rebecca Osborne - Brit Marling Mac Mcleod - Sam Elliott Billy Cusimano - Stephen Root Isabel Grant - Jacqueline Evancho

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‘The Company You Keep’ movie review

At its core, " The Company You Keep " is a good, solid thriller about a fugitive trying to clear his name. But it's a much more interesting movie at the edges.

Based on Neil Gordon's 2003 novel about a former Weather Underground activist who has spent some 30 years in hiding after being implicated in a bank robbery that turned violent, the film follows a predictable path. Jim Grant (Robert Redford, who also directed) has been living under an assumed name and working as a respectable lawyer when a former colleague and fellow fugitive from his radical days (Susan Sarandon) is arrested by the FBI. Her apprehension, in which she looks like she wanted to get caught, piques the interest of a young newspaper reporter named Ben Shep­ard (Shia LaBeouf), whose dogged snooping also flushes out Jim.

Jim, a widower with a young daughter (Jackie Evancho), is soon on the lam again.

But his behavior — handing off his daughter to his brother (Chris Cooper) before making a beeline for his old radical pals (Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins) — suggests to Ben that Jim thinks he’s innocent and is trying to find someone to exonerate him. That sounds like a story to Ben, but it also puts the journalist at odds with an FBI officer (Terrence Howard), who’s tired of his agency being made to look like chumps by a bunch of old hippies.

The chase — part police manhunt, part shoe-leather reporting — forms the spine of the story. It’s a pretty gripping one, with secrets, a twist and an only slightly silly ending. The performances are uniformly fine, and Redford’s direction keeps things taut and moving.

But there’s a far more intriguing film in the shadows of the story.

Screenwriter Lem Dobbs, who worked with Steven Soderbergh on " Haywire ," " The Limey " and "Kafka," has fashioned a script that's propulsive, while allowing for plenty of breathing room. The themes of aging, atonement and the death of idealism alone add layers of complexity and richness to the tale. But on top of that, Dobbs digs deeply into the question of terrorism and its definition. What's the difference between the Weather Underground and al-Qaeda? The film asks this through Ben, a character who wasn't even born by the end of the Vietnam War — a war that some of Jim's colleagues considered itself a form of terrorism.

“The Company You Keep” looks at the notion of morality — both the shifting, relativistic kind and the more inflexible variety — from more than one angle, and without obvious judgment. It has a story to tell, not an ax to grind.

It also features a splendid depiction of real, 21st-century journalism as practiced on the ground: crippled, idealistic and more than slightly desperate. Stanley Tucci is great as Ben’s beleaguered editor.

In the end, there’s a love story at the heart of “Company.” In fact, there’s more than one. It offers no apologies for the old act of violence that precipitates its action, but it holds a deep affection for the gray areas of dissension, debate and disillusionment that sometimes leave blood on the floor.

R. At area theaters. Contains obscenity, drug references and brief violence. 125 minutes.

TIFF 2012: THE COMPANY YOU KEEP Review

From TIFF 2012, read Matt's The Company You Keep review of Robert Redford's new thriller starring Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, and Terrence Howard.

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Movie Review: Redford’s The Company You Keep Is Almost Confrontational in Its Classicism

Rough but heartfelt, Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep is the kind of film you’re glad still exists, even though you wish it were better. Though billed as a fugitive thriller, it works much better as a reflective drama. Director Redford plays Jim Grant, a widowed father and successful Albany lawyer whose hidden radical past (and long-submerged identity) suddenly comes back to haunt him when a former Weather Underground colleague, played by Susan Sarandon, is taken into custody by the Feds for a deadly bank robbery decades ago. He goes on the run to try and find an old flame (Julie Christie) who might be able to clear his name. Pursuing him are a tenacious FBI agent (Terrence Howard) and a scheming reporter (Shia LaBeouf), who is determined to reveal our hero’s true identity.

As a piece of suspense, it ain’t exactly North by Northwest , or even Three Days of the Condor ; the awkward attempts at chase scenes make it clear that Redford the actor, who has always given off a slightly lugubrious air, has lost a step or two physically. But he was never much of an action hero, or action director, to begin with, and the good news is that he isn’t really trying to make an action film, whatever halfhearted genre flourishes he may toss in here and there.

As a director of actors, though, Redford still has a generosity and a focus that serves the story well. Besides Sarandon and Christie, Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins, Stephen Root, Chris Cooper, and Sam Elliott all show up in supporting roles, and however small the parts, they’re given space to work. The camera at times seems content to just sit there and watch them — a good thing, because we are, too. There’s something behind these actors’ eyes that reaches beyond the screen; that kind of suggested inner life is crucial for a film like this, which is all about past deeds and forgotten ideals.

In a way, these characters are all ghosts, and the somber, measured style of the film helps enhance this haunted quality. Redford has always been a bit of a throwback directorially; back in 1992, A River Runs Through It felt like the best movie nobody made in 1952. But now his classicism feels almost confrontational — as if he’s trying to prove a point rather than just making movies the best way he knows how.

The younger actors don’t always fare as well as the older ones, however. LaBeouf is supposed to be ambitious and dogged — sort of like Kate Mara’s character on House of Cards , perhaps — but he comes across more as a snot. “Thirty years ago, a smart guy like you would have joined the cause,” Redford’s character tells him at one point, and all we can think is, No wonder they failed . Howard, meanwhile, is wasted yet again. Anna Kendrick and Brit Marling fare a bit better.

This isn’t the first time this sort of story has been tackled, and well: Sidney Lumet’s 1987 Running on Empty , featuring an Oscar-nominated River Phoenix, and the German director Christian Petzold’s The State I Am In , from 2000, are both about the desperate lives of former radicals on the run from the law, trying to break free of their dark legacies. The Company You Keep may suffer in comparison to those films, in part because it’s a hybrid, a touching drama with weak suspense elements. But this moody, somber work still feels at times like a welcome return to form for Redford the director, if not Redford the star.

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The company you keep, common sense media reviewers.

Stellar cast is best thing about Redford's political drama.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

It's not always easy to make the moral choice,

Jim is wanted by the FBI for a decades-old crime;

A character is chased through the woods by federal

Characters flirt and sometimes discuss their past

Strong language includes multiple uses of both &qu

Labels/brands seen include GMC, Volvo, Twitter, Go

One character smuggles large bales of marijuana in

Parents need to know that The Company You Keep stars Robert Redford, who also directed, as a once-radical fugitive who's wanted for a 1960s bank robbery that left a guard dead -- but who long ago went underground, changed his name, and left everything behind. Once the long-cold case again becomes national…

Positive Messages

It's not always easy to make the moral choice, especially when it might have serious consequences. Jim, as a fugitive on the run for a crime that was committed decades ago, meets several of his old co-conspirators, and some are quite reluctant to help him if doing so threatens the comfortable lives they've created for themselves.

Positive Role Models

Jim is wanted by the FBI for a decades-old crime; he goes on the run to find some of the original participants, who are forced to make tough choices between what's right and what's easy. Some are more willing than others to do the right thing. And a young reporter who's digging into the story must make some equally tough choices when he unearths long-buried secrets.

Violence & Scariness

A character is chased through the woods by federal agents. Several scenes include old, grainy news footage of a bank robbery that left a security guard dead.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Characters flirt and sometimes discuss their past romantic entanglements.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language includes multiple uses of both "f--k" and "s--t," plus "ass," "a--hole," "hell," "damn," "goddamn," and more.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Labels/brands seen include GMC, Volvo, Twitter, Google, and Toyota.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

One character smuggles large bales of marijuana in a sailboat. Other people drink beer at a bar.

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Company You Keep stars Robert Redford , who also directed, as a once-radical fugitive who's wanted for a 1960s bank robbery that left a guard dead -- but who long ago went underground, changed his name, and left everything behind. Once the long-cold case again becomes national news, everything changes. Expect a fair bit of strong language (mostly "f--k" and "s--t"), plus plenty of fiery talk about revolutionary ideals, as well as a few scenes that feature people drinking beer. And one aging hippie now gets by smuggling large quantities of marijuana. The all-star supporting cast includes Shia LaBeouf , Susan Sarandon , and Julie Christie . To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

Jim Grant ( Robert Redford , who also directed) is a single dad and public interest lawyer in upstate New York. He's also wanted for a bank robbery decades earlier that left a guard dead, back when he was a 1960s radical and a member of the Weather Underground. After the heist, Jim (who wasn't Jim then) and the rest of the gang went underground, changed their identities, and stayed hidden for years. But when one of them ( Susan Sarandon ) is finally captured, Jim's cover is blown, and he must find his old friends before the FBI catches up with him. Shia LaBeouf co-stars as an aggressive reporter hot on Jim's heels, trying to figure out what really happened at the bank so many years ago. The film boasts an all-star cast of supporting characters as aging radicals, including Julie Christie , Nick Nolte , Richard Jenkins , and Sam Elliott .

Is It Any Good?

You won't be bored watching THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, which benefits from Redford's taut pacing and, well, his company. He may be one of the best understated actors in the business, and he has stuffed this drama with an ensemble of fine and finer thespians with a cupboard-full of award nominations and wins among them.

But by the time you reach the end of the film (which was based on Neil Gordon's novel), you may wonder why it bothered to entice you in the first place. The climax/ending is so unsatisfying, so thin, that it all seems like much ado over not very much at all. The movie's call for action -- for today's generation to examine its apathy or avarice -- is admirable, but if all our activism ends in a whimper, like this film does, what's the point? Watch it for the privilege of watching great actors do what they do best. That is all.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why they think some of the fugitives in the film are willing to give up their comfortable lives and turn themselves in. Why did Jim choose to go underground?

How well does this film explain the radical politics of the 1960s and 1970s? How could you find out more if you wanted to?

Do you think you could ever leave your entire life, change your name, and stay hidden for decades?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 5, 2013
• On DVD or streaming : August 13, 2013
• Cast : Brit Marling , Robert Redford , Shia LaBeouf , Susan Sarandon
• Director : Robert Redford
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Bisexual actors
• Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History
• Run time : 121 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language
• Last updated : July 20, 2023

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The Company You Keep

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Right-wingers have their panties in a bunch misreading Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep as a celebration of the Weather Underground, who were 1960s radicals committed to the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. It’s the corruption of Sixties idealism that sparks the interest of Redford as actor and director. In adapting Neil Gordon’s novel, screenwriter Lem Dobbs tells us about extremists who went into hiding. When a present-day New York housewife, Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon), turns herself in to the FBI for a 30-year-old Michigan bank robbery that resulted in the death of a security guard, reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) begins investigating. He turns up Jim Grant (Redford), a widowed lawyer with a young daughter, Isabel (singer Jacqueline Evancho). Jim has been using a false identity, living in a small town. But as Ben ties Jim together with Sharon and the murder, Jim goes on the run, linking up with his old underground as he tries to locate former love Mimi (a dynamite Julie Christie), an unmellowed revolutionary who might clear his name.

There’s enough plot to stuff a miniseries, but Redford never loses sight of the human drama. Martyrdom is not conferred, nor is reinvention equated with redemption. Drawing skillfully on a first-rate cast, Redford builds a riveting, resonant political thriller that values the complexity of its characters and the intelligence of its audience. In sellout Hollywood, that makes it revolutionary.

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‘The Company You Keep’ (2012) Movie Review

By Brad Brevet

The Company You Keep is an average thriller. It’s not entirely exhilarating, but passes the time despite being a little too long at just over two hours. However, forget the thriller aspect for a second, the weirdest bit is the journalism side of the story and its clear hatred for new media. To be fair, I share director Robert Redford ‘s disgust for the hit baiting slam pieces that come from today’s media more focused on clicks than integrity and proper sourcing. But, as we watch a young journalist do everything he can to check his sources and get the story straight, the way the narrative plays out it all begins to feel extraordinarily contradictory.

Written by Lem Dobbs ( The Limey , Dark City ), The Company You Keep is an adaptation of Neil Gordon’s novel centering on a young journalist’s exploration into the identity of a former member of the Weather Underground. The events are triggered following the arrest of Sharon Solarz ( Susan Sarandon ), a one-time member of the Weather Underground responsible for a variety of violent acts of domestic terrorism while protesting the Vietnam War. With the arrest happening in the backyard of a struggling local Albany newspaper, the editor ( Stanley Tucci ) sends the ambitious young journalist Ben Shepard ( Shia LaBeouf ) out to investigate how the FBI even knew where Solarz would be in the first place.

Ben’s investigation quickly leads him to Jim Grant (Redford), a single father working as a lawyer with a private practice. Connecting the dots, he eventually learns Grant was also once a member of the Underground. He outs him in an article, sending him on the run with the FBI hot on his tail, but Ben has an inkling Grant isn’t running out of guilt, but for reasons he can’t yet quite explain.

The main focus here is Ben’s method of investigation. Yes, he uses Google search a couple times, but other than that he’s a pen, paper and library archives kind of guy, yet he’s chastised time and again over new media’s lack of sources, told such things as, “Maybe you should go tweet that” and “Oh, so you guys actually do get sources now.”

Ben isn’t the only one in the film’s line of sight as much as I got the impression most of America’s youth is the target as a desk clerk is made to look ignorant while tapping away on his cell phone before Ben interrupts him in search of some documents. Meanwhile, Ben is building a story, checking his sources and travels from Albany to Ann Arbor on his own dime. Hardly a journalist with the lack of integrity found in the new media slackers this script has set its sights on.

To tell the story, Redford has scattered a boatload of talent throughout. Including those already mentioned, appearances are made by Brendan Gleeson, Richard Jenkins, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Julie Christie, Brit Marling, Terrence Howard, Sam Elliott and Anna Kendrick . No one can say Redford can’t assemble a cast, but then again he got together solid performers for both Lions for Lambs and The Conspirator and neither one of those exactly turned out a winner.

From the performances to the filmmaking, nothing stands out as much as it all maintains a level of status quo. It’s a competent film, good for a rental, but not much else. It’s a poor man’s All the President’s Men and the thriller aspect wears thin pretty quick and the mystery behind the story holds very little intrigue from the start.

Walking away, it felt the reason Redford even chose to direct the film had less to do with the story and more to do with a chance to point out the awful state of journalism today. It felt like every scene Shia LaBeouf was involved in at least one shot would be fired in the general direction of new media reporting and the idea of defamation over accuracy. Like I said, I understand the sentiment, but if that’s the film Redford wanted to make he should have thought about directing a different story.

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‘the company you keep’ review: milo ventimiglia and catherine haena kim in a frothy abc drama with a hint of potential.

A con artist links up with a CIA agent in this romantic/odd-couple series, based on a South Korean show.

By Daniel Fienberg

Daniel Fienberg

Chief Television Critic

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It may not be the second coming of Friday Night Lights or The Good Wife , but ABC ‘s Will Trent is probably my favorite broadcast network TV drama of the year. What I appreciate most about the Karin Slaughter adaptation is how quickly it established its characters, its location and the elements of its premise that are relatively distinctive. The show became what it aspired to be in a hurry.

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The kind of show it wants to be, basically, is The Catch , a Shonda Rhimes-produced comedic heist romance that ABC developed, redeveloped and redeveloped again over a truncated two-season run back in 2016-17. But if nobody at ABC is going to have the institutional memory to remember that they already made this show, who am I to bring it up?

This version is ostensibly adapted by Julia Cohen and Phil Klemmer from the South Korean series My Fellow Citizens! 

Our heroes: Charlie Nicoletti ( Milo Ventimiglia ) is an extraordinarily gifted con man in a family of cons. He works with his ultra-cautious sister ( Sarah Wayne Callies ‘ Birdie) and parents ( William Fichtner ‘s Leo and Polly Draper’s Fran) to orchestrate big scores, but only big scores against people who really deserve it, because that’s how con artists work in movies and TV shows. They’re also eying that “one last con” that’ll allow them all to go straight, but a lucrative play on an Irish mobster goes pear-shaped.

Emma Hill ( Catherine Haena Kim ) is part of a family that aspires to be the Asian American Kennedys. I know this, because in the second episode, a character says that Emma’s mother (Freda Foh Shen)  wants them to be the Asian American Kennedys. Her father (James Saito) is a former governor and her brother (Tim Chiou) is a senator. I know this because in the pilot, somebody addresses Emma at a party and declares, “Your father’s a former governor, your brother’s a senator, what does that make you?”

Emma’s got problems in her personal life that lead to her sitting lonely at a hotel bar, where she meets Charlie in the aftermath of his job-gone-wrong. They flirt (joking about how they’re lying about their respective identities). They spend 36 hours together. There are feelings. 

But Charlie is a con artist! And Emma is a CIA agent! How ever will they find a way to flirt attractively, while keeping their respective professional covers?  

The Company You Keep is very, very clumsy at introducing a conceit that is unquestionably busy, but definitely not complicated. 

My earlier suggestion was that it takes too long for The Company You Keep to settle into what its actual structure and rhythms will be, but it could just as easily be that it doesn’t take enough time. One character after another refers to Charlie’s brilliance, but I’ve seen two episodes and nothing he does is even vaguely clever, much less brilliant. Emma’s own brilliance is established by her doing one of those Sherlock Holmes quick-reads on a stranger, but the show doesn’t bother to establish the elements of her personal life that lead to her meeting with Charlie at the hotel bar, nor does it ask you to believe the psychology of that meeting.

Maybe halfway through the second episode, The Company You Keep gets all of that stuff out of the way. Well, not all of it. There’s a lot of exposition that still has to be presented.  But the show that this settles into being is decent or, as I keep saying, has the potential to be decent, since I’ve only seen 20 minutes of it.

The paralleling of the two families, and therefore the paralleling of legitimate and illegitimate con artistry, is interesting. There will need to be more specifics, obviously. I already mentioned how bad the Nicoletti’s first con is and the con in the second episode, while vastly better, is more an opportunity for Fichtner to play funny dress-up than anything else, while the Hills are politicians in that nebulous television way that’s completely non-ideological and therefore bordering on meaningless.

But I like the care that has been taken to give the families and their interactions a similar shape. And I like the seeds of performances and characterizations, especially the warmth from the older generation of actors, all gifted enough to contribute nuance well beyond what was on the page. In the case of both families, the non-featured sibling has the least developed role, though at least Callies’ Birdie has hints of a meaningful relationship with a deaf daughter (Shaylee Mansfield), which I’m curious to see unfold. 

It remains to be seen if the show The Company You Keep eases into by its second episode is sustainable. You can only have a con-of-the-week structure as a longterm device if the cons are better than they’ve been so far. You can only expect viewers to care about an inconsequential political race — Emma’s senator brother is up for reelection — if there’s some substance to the politics. And, more than anything, a relationship built on a key secret can play in suspense and obfuscation for a while, but not infinitely. There’s enough here that I’ll give it a little more time.

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