THE COMPANY YOU KEEP: A REVIEW BY MARILYN PENN
http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2013/04/05/the-company-you-keep-a-review/
There are two big problems with Robert Redford’s new film about the 60’s Weathermen who became fugitives from justice. The first is the casting of himself as someone just three decades removed from that period of time; sadly, Redford has aged quickly and badly and looks every minute of his actual late 70’s which would have made him a student activist in his mid 40’s. Even Brendan Gleeson, never a matinee idol, would have been a more logical choice for the main character of Nick Sloan, a man with an assumed identity, a career as a lawyer in Albany and a pressing responsibility as a recent widower who is now the sole parent of an 11 year old daughter. Since there are far too many close-ups of the strawberry-blonde septuagenarian, we can’t escape the essential hole in the story – how to believe that grandpa was just a young idealist (or radical ideologue) only thirty years before.
The deeper problem is that the movie shifts course from a discussion of the essence of the Weathermen’s cause, with its diatribe about the sins of Amerika, ruled by evil corporations and the military-industrial complex and the radical group’s accompanying murder of innocents as justification of its goals – to a movie about an innocent man who was never even present at the scene of the crime. This is what is known as an old-fashioned cop-out, only exacerbated by the sanctimonious ending in which we are asked to believe that two of the important characters exhibit a total reversal of their previous behavior after a heart to heart talk with Nick. What a wasted opportunity, particularly at a time when Kathy Boudin’s faculty appointment at Columbia Law School has been circulating on the internet, once again raising the specter of our own update of the sixties’ fascination with radical chic and moral bankruptcy.
The young reporter who activates the plot by uncovering Nick Sloan’s identity, is played by Shia la Boeuf whose performance is sorely compromised by a screenplay that has him invading people’s homes, family dinners and social dates without being summarily dismissed and ejected. Perhaps if he had been played by Ryan Gosling we might have accepted that at least the young attractive woman might have wanted him to linger for a while, but as a scruffy young boor, he loses all credibility. The usually luminous Julie Christie still has her moments, particularly lit by firelight, but has no opportunity to show the uncanny sensitivity she displayed a few years back in “Away From Her.” And the biggest waste of talent is the failure of Redford to have used some appropriate music in the closing credits to be sung by Jackie Evancho, the operatic prodigy who plays Redford’s young daughter in the film and who in reality has become a musical sensation after becoming a finalist on America’s Got Talent at the age of 10. If you want to be moved by sheer genius, go to Youtube.com and click on Jackie singing the aria “Nessun Dorma” – then shake your head at Redford’s gaffe, knowing how much “The Way We Were” lingers in our memories because of Barbra Streisand’s haunting rendition of the title song. There’s also a simulated duet on Youtube of Barbra and Jackie singing Somewhere from “West Side Story” – another worthwhile number that will provide the frisson that is missing from “The Company You Keep” and make you yearn for someone to build a movie that allows this young girl to become the superstar she is destined to be.
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