Wonderful character development!

What makes it different from others?

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The Company You Keep stars Robert Redford (Jim Grant) as a public-interest lawyer and widower living quietly with young daughter Isabel in the Upstate New York town of Saugerties. Quiet for him turns to upheaval with the capture of Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon), the most-wanted radical Weatherman fugitive who has been living underground. Aggressive Albany reporter Ben (Shia LaBeouf), using his connection to former college friend and junior FBI agent Diana (Anna Kendrick), gets access to Sharon and clues to Grant, another fugitive, who lives under an assumed name. The Company You Keep is relatively a slow paced political drama but within the final act, the film does pick up and becomes an entertaining watch. Surrounding with a great cast, the film succeeds at that aspect as there are many characters given small roles.

In his long row of successes like Brubaker, Sneakers, The Last Castle, Spy Game and many more, Robert Redford both produces, directs and stars a rousing movie with the exact right combination of action and quiet scenes, giving the watcher a steady feeling of not wanting to miss a single moment. Another point is the successful use of old and very old great actors up to the age of 76. Bravo! The only error that keep the movie from getting 10 stars is the cast of Shia LaBeouf as digging journalist with absolutely no mimic: Looking like a 14-year old student he seems like trying to act like Dustin Hoffmann in The Graduate or All the President's Men, but continuously he reveals the mismatch between the figure and the actor. There is a growing suspicion that he was casted because of his ethnicity.

The biggest problem with the movie is that the reporter role seems forced and he's just not that interesting compared to the others. The time spent on his obnoxious sleuthing might have been better spent on developing Mimi's character. Redford and Christie seemed to have no chemistry in their eventual meet up scene. They don't interact so much as they spout plot points and backstory at each other in the cabin, and there seems to be nowhere near enough desperation in Redford, who is ostensibly a parent on the verge of never again seeing his daughter. Susan Sarandon's character could also have been fascinating - it's her somewhat inexplicable desire to surrender that sets the whole story off after all. Her motivations might have been better developed than simple and somewhat pointless exposition to a random reporter. And why would the FBI decide to let her give an interview in the first place? How does it benefit them in any way? Overall, it seems like the journalist angle felt shoehorned in to artificially add mystery. Remove all of that, and there could have been brilliantly powerful scenes depicting their struggles between their idealism and their wizened reality.

The Company You Keep; A Robert Redford film Viewed at Cinestar 4, Sony Center, Berlin, Sunday night, August 4, 2013. THE COMPANY YOU KEEP Directed and starring Robert Redford is a Political thriller about Weatherman Underground Radicals of the sixties surfacing four decades later, and a gung-ho reporter on a provincial newspaper tracking the story. Co stars, Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, And the young daughter, (Jackie Evancho, in an important role). Other supporting roles, the Negro police chief, the Albany Sun newspaper editor, and several other old timers. This is essentially an old timers film to see what stars of the sixties and early seventies look like forty and fifty years later -- At least that was my main interest here in Berlin on a summer Sunday evening with nothing better to do. Redford has aged crunchingly and his face is so ravaged that he looks older than his actual age (76) but he still has the star charisma and moves like a younger man looking better as the pic progresses and you get used to his older look -- Ravaged but instantly recognizable playing the father of a twelve year old which makes him seem younger, but the kid could really be his grand daughter. In any case all the scenes between them are extra good and Redford comes. across as a truly loving and affectionate father. The father child chemistry was perfect. Later Redford is also good as the fugitive on the lam, in fact this is his most convincing performance of late, playing an underground sixties rebel wrongfully accused of a murder that was actually committed by his old flame (and mother of an older daughter who was given up for adoption) -- Julie Christie (now 72) . MS. Christie doesn't appear until late in the picture and is all but unrecognizable as the erstwhile alluring English "Darling" of the swinging sixties -- but still looks interesting with that pointed nose as a ravaged old lady who was once a beauty. (Anatomically speaking the whole picture can be seen as a study of Noses!)In the story Redford, a former Weatherman, has been living under an assumed name and a new identity for 35 years, so if he was, say, in his mid twenties in the mid 60s he would be in his late 60s at the present time of the picture -- which is a little old to have an eleven year old daughter, but not out of the question. In any case he plays the father convincingly and the ending where he is finally reunited with her and they walk away from the camera chatting with no sound, is quite poetic and heart warming. Susan Sarandon (a mere 66). appears right at the beginning, also as an old time Weatherman who turns herself in and there is a long scene with stark facial closeups between her and Shia Laboeuf, is an investigative reporter interviewing her in jail . This is Sarandon's only big scene and affords a magnificent study of her ski-jump nasal structure -- and is crucial to the whole story as she expounds the entire philosophy of the radical anti-war movement of the sixties The whole movie abounds in facial closeups so it's pretty clear that Redford has no hang- ups about showing his age on screen. . . . Or the ages of his contemporaries! Nick Nolte (72) is a surprise coming out of the woodwork in the middle of the pic, again nearly unrecognizable, except for the voice in a small but very positive part. Chris Cooper (62) plays Redford's younger brother in his usual business like manner and has a nice hairdo (for an older cat!). Shia Laboeuf, 27 (in horn rimmed glasses throughout (like Clark Kent) was surprisingly appealing as the compulsive ambitious young reporter and is obviously a comer on the current Hollywood scene. I saw him here in February during the Berlinale in an abominable action movie set in Bucharest, and thought he was just another young nothing of an actor, but -- gulp -- I was wrong. Mea Culpa. Overall it was a bit of a shaggy dog story as we travel all over the map from Albany to the mid-west, with Redford trying to find the one!person (Christie) who can clear his name of an old murder rap, but the characters kept it going and the suspense of the chase was there. Not a great movie but pretty good "time pass" as they say in India, especially to see old stars still earning their keep in Geritol roles. Christie I found exceptionally interesting to watch in the crucial long scene in the cabin with Redford by the fire faces partially in shadow beautifully shot, in a very un-Darlingesque appearance.All in all it was a routine story trying to remind us of a little sixties history with maybe something to say about internal terrorism. There is one scene where Redford visits a bald headed old crony who is now a respected college professor and this guy tells him that the adventures they lived through in the sixties are like Ancient History to his students These days! ~ What this movie does, above all, is remind older viewers that Time Marches On and we will all soon be history ourselves --- but that is maybe a subtext that was not intended. For me the main interest of the movie was the Nostalgia factor ---the lingering studies of aging star faces with the sappy younger generation basically in the background. This definitely not a youth oriented movie but more a movie for survivors of the sixties like myself -- an era that has now become more remote in the collective memory than World War 2 -- as old and jaded as the Rolling stones and Paul MacCartney. Paul --- er, who??