elshikh4
Sure Robert Redford – the movie's director, producer, and star – had an ambition of a movie that could say something about the 1960s anti-establishment activist youth, and their dream of changing the world, while being – in the same time – a thriller, a la The Fugitive, with a chased innocent hero who's chasing the truth. Wonderful ambition that is. But who said that good movies are made by wonderful ambitions only ! The plot is all over the place. We have a running lead who meets many old friends, chatters with them, then continues running. We have a reporter who does researches, chatters with his boss, then continues researching. We have different friends that have a past with the lead, a police officer who's determined to catch the lead, and a daughter who the lead abandoned years ago, and grew up not knowing her real parents (a straggling story-line from an old Indian melodrama !). So for most of the time, you would feel lost and bored; just the second is the worst thing could happen in a thriller if you asked me !Moreover, the script makes many mistakes along the way. For starters, the time-line was a mess. According to the movie, the Weather Underground militant did their bank robbery in 1980 as a part of their refusal to Vietnam war; while Vietnam war itself ended in 1975 ! Actually the script was capable of making its accident happen in 1970, as it could have been logically, while saying that the present events take place 30 years later, in 2000. But it didn't do that, maybe to avert recreating the 2000 atmosphere. So, instead, it made its leads crazy people, who oppose a war 5 years after its end !Shia LaBeouf plays a young reporter who discovers that the lead deluded the police for 30 years, then discovers his long-concealed first daughter, then discovers his exact whereabouts near the end ??!! Well, he must be smart. Ultra Columbo, and Einstein, smart !! The police are mobilizing all their forces, and scientific weapons, for locating the lead; as if he's the most wanted man on the plant ! The lead escapes from his cabin in the woods, to surrender to the police seconds later ?! Then, in the end, what could be the reasons that pushed Julie Christie's character to change her mind, and confess to the police ?! What could be the reasons that made the reporter change his mind, and avoid exposing the lead's history ?! And how that adopted daughter's story-line was left incomplete as if it's unnecessary ?!This movie has one of the best casts ever. It could have been a blast, a blessing, but no such luck. They're strangely wasted. Save Susan Sarandon's character, there aren't nicely written characters, or characters, to perform. I'm asking bitterly what Brendan Gleeson, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Sam Elliott, and Terrence Howard are doing here exactly ?!! What a pity to use all of them for merely saying couple of lines. Neglecting the characters, to become that empty, is enraging (even cameos have to be memorable than this !). And when these very characters are handled to a long list of highly gifted actors; then it's disappointing too !Redford as an actor was at his weakest condition. His reactions were inanimate more than low key. And for most of the time, he looked unfocused or uninvolved. Not to mention that he was 20 years older than his character, being 76 year old at the time. Hence matters like having an 11 year old child, and implying making love with his old girlfriend (old indeed !), were more like unfunny jokes ! Speaking about his old flame, Julie Christie was 71 year old, and – worse – seemed suffering a gluttony of Botox, to have the most stretched face in movie history. It was so stretched you can see the camera in it ! Shia LaBeouf looks nerdy already, so when they put him in a makeup and haircut to emphasize that nerdy look; the result was EXTREME nerd !Film critic Rex Reed wrote in The New York Observer that the movie has "keen, well-crafted direction of a master filmmaker at the top of his form" !! OK, you can say that about other movies by Redford, like Ordinary People (1980), and Quiz Show (1994), but this time, it's baloney. Because Redford is executing more than directing. The dialogs are filmed blandly, with artless cadres and monotonous cuts. He even didn't want to underline the thrilling parts, even if they were few. Therefore the whole movie felt like an endless and pointless talk show.Pros : Sarandon's "clarity" interview while she was in custody, Redford and Christie's reproach talk by the fire, and Redford and Richard Jenkins's conversation about SDS ("Students for a Democratic Society"; the 1960s activist movement), and the never coming second American revolution, in a fine art exhibition; as if the noble ideas have become no more than paintings in some hall, not applied principles in the society.The Company You Keep is about those knights of the 1960s, whom dreamed of changing their country, and while some of them committed shameful sins, all of them ended up defeated, detached, and desperate. Though, someone must tell their story to the kids of today; as the movie says in its best line, and embodies in its last shot. However in terms of that story, Redford didn't achieve any victory. He couldn't make a fine movie about it, or a fine thriller out of it either. Even that last shot was quasi-naive, and too artistic for this movie's own good !
