Culture

Rating: 3/5

The Company You Keep, directed by Robert Redford, was based on a novel of the same name, and a novel it should have stayed. The story revolves around Jim Grant (Redford) a former Weather Underground militant, who becomes a wanted fugitive after his identity is exposed by a journalist (Shia LaBeouf) who is reporting on another Weather Underground member’s (Susan Sarandon) confession to being part of a bank robbery gone wrong decades earlier. The setup had potential, but the film failed to ever really get going.

In the spirit of fairness, I was willing to suspend disbelief that the 70-year-old Redford could have a young daughter, but the effort it took to do so almost instantly spoiled the movie. The experienced cast do an okay job of portraying people whose youthful convictions have withered with age, but any chance The Company You Keep had of being an adequate thriller is diluted by a pathetic and largely predictable ending. Stanley Tucci is the standout, along with LeBeouf, as the editor of an Albany newspaper struggling to pay its bills. Equally, Julie Christie’s short stint as a fiery anti-establishmentarian bucks the trend of the older actors turning to grey blobs. Yet none of these performances is enough to free this film from the shackles of its mediocrity, and only served to remind me how easily talented people get dragged down with rubbish writing. Nothing was more indicative of this than Brendan Gleeson’s part as a retired detective.

The screenplay, written by Lem Dobbs, suffers from the symptoms of most book-to-movie adaptations. It lacks character development, nuance and a satisfactory ending. I felt like I didn’t care for a single character, apart from LeBeouf’s, purely because there was no time to get to know what makes them tick. If anti-Vietnam War activism is your thing, my advice is to go read the book.