The Company You Keep
The past catches up to a group of 1970s radicals.
Directed by Robert Redford
(R)
**
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Robert Redford’s “terribly clumsy” new drama squanders heaps of talent, said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. The star, director, and producer surrounded himself with fine actors in this story about a 1970s radical who’s forced onto the run three decades later, but “its structure is so cockeyed” that the suspense never takes. Playing the reporter whose digging triggers the hunt, Shia LaBeouf “is the film’s standout,” said Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. As Redford’s Nick Sloan contacts former compatriots in his bid to escape arrest for a 30-year-old bank robbery that resulted in a guard’s death, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, and Julie Christie also come through playing the “showy moments” that the script offers them. But Redford, at 76, looks “at least a decade too old to play a 1970s radical,” and that’s not the only place where the movie “stretches credulity way past the breaking point,” said Lou Lumenick inthe New York Post. “There are scattered moments” of drama, but only the illogical behavior of the reporter and some “hokey coincidences” carry the story to its final line.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Do youth curfews work?
Today's big question Banning unaccompanied children from towns and cities is popular with some voters but is contentious politically
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
'Sleaze baack!'
Today's Newspapers A roundup of the headlines from the US front pages
By The Week Staff Published
-
Quiz of The Week: 20 - 26 April
Puzzles and Quizzes Have you been paying attention to The Week's news?
By Rebecca Messina, The Week UK Published