Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Robert Redford, Madman Entertainment.
Oscar-winning director Robert Redford joins a star-studded cast, and directs this taut thriller, based on the lives of a former radical protest/terrorist organisation, Weather Underground.
Lawyer Jim Grant (Redford, Ordinary People) goes into hiding after his past involvement with the revolutionary militant activists looks like becoming exposed when a former group member Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking), turns herself in to the FBI.
Grant, who is wanted for a bank robbery and murder, has hidden from the FBI for over 30 years, as an attorney in Albany, New York. He becomes a fugitive when his true identity is exposed by Ben Shepard (LaBeouf), an aggressive young reporter. Grant must find his ex-lover, Mimi, the one person who can clear his name, before the FBI catches him. Otherwise, he will lose everything, including his child. While Ben struggles with ethical issues as a journalist, Jim and his old friends from the Weather Underground must live with the consequences of their radical past.
As Ben’s prickly editor, Ray Fuller (Stanley Tucci), assigns him to follow-up, he turns to his ex-girlfriend, Diana (Anna Kendrick), an FBI agent, and he presses her for information about the case.
Spooked by the federal investigation, Jim takes his 11-year-old daughter Isabel (Jackie Evancho) on “a little trip”, driving north at first to throw off his pursuers. Ben learns that Mimi Lurie (Julie Christie), an accomplice in the Michigan bank robbery, was last seen in Canada. More intrigue surfaces as a private investigator (helping Ben) finds out that Jim had no Social Security number prior to 1979 and finds a copy of Jim Grant’s California death certificate.
Clever screenplay by Lem Dobbs, based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Neil Gordon, raises legitimate questions about principles and loyalty.
- The Company You Keep is available on DVD
