![]() When Nick finds Mimi in a remote cabin, "The Company You Keep" assumes the tone of a bittersweet romance. ![]() 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. 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. The top-heavy casting almost works against the story, despite the talents of all involved. 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. It's up to an FBI agent ( Anna Kendrick) to call bull- and tell Ben she found Solarz's speech offensive. 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. Why now? Her motivation isn't entirely clear. 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. ![]() 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. This is but one of the distractions in "The Company You Keep" that kept me at a distance. So was Sloan in his mid-40s at the time - or are we supposed to believe he's about 60 now? 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. ![]() 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. Yet like so many great stars before him, Redford, now 76, steadfastly refuses to go gently into that good grandfatherhood. ![]()
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