Best movie of this year hands down!

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Although I realize that the movie is based on a novel and is entirely fictional, my first hope when I decided to watch it was that I might nevertheless learn something about the Weather Underground. I'm fairly familiar with US history, but I have to confess that all I knew about the group was that it was a violent anti-Vietnam group, so I looked forward to gaining a little more knowledge. That possibility was put to rest by the fact that the movie has the group pulling off a bank robbery in 1980 - long after the group had ceased to exist. (Why the bank robbery wouldn't have been put farther back into the past to make this more believable is a mystery.) So my primary hope in watching this really wasn't achieved. But how did it work as a movie; as a piece of entertainment? I can't say that I found it a gripping two hours.The movie started far too abruptly with the arrest of Sharon (Susan Sarandon) for the long ago (even if it was 1980) robbery and murder of a bank guard. The basic story really needed to be introduced a bit more before that happened. But after that happens, the film settles into its basic story, as with the FBI searching for him, Jim (really Nick - played by Robert Redford) suddenly has to go on the run, seeking out the one person who can confirm that he wasn't a part of the robbery and murder. For the most part I just didn't find this very interesting. It features a lot of well known names (Redford - who also directed - and Sarandon, but also people like Nick Nolte and Sam Elliott and Julie Christie) but, for me, it didn't feature a lot of performances that really stood out. Redford's age (he was 76 when this as made) was a big problem for me - especially as he was portrayed as the father of an 11 year old daughter. Not impossible, I agree, but it seemed far-fetched - and I thought Redford at times looked his age. Shia LaBeouf, who played a reporter, was entirely unnecessary to the story, quite frankly. I didn't really need the reporter to push this story forward to be honest. The closest thing to a plot twist in this (revolving around the adopted daughter of the sheriff who investigated the bank robbery years before) was one I had figured out almost from the beginning.There was a bit of intensity toward the end of the movie when we wondered if Mimi (Christie) was going to escape to Canada or return to save Nick's skin, but aside from that I found that my attention simply kept wandering as the movie plodded along. (3/10)

From my point of view Robert Redford deserves much more consideration as director. I would rate each of his movies at least an 8/10.His movies are usually a statement of real values in life: commitment, fight for freedom, spirituality, democracy, truth, love...--Possible spoilers ahead-- "The Company You Keep" is a story of a man with a past in which other 's peoples lives and fates are involved. As a result of his compatriot 's arrest, past rises to the surface again since he is wanted for as an accomplice.Is interesting to see how he tries to manage to this fact in order to affects the less possible to people around him.Like in some of his last movies, the main character is a person with no ego, much more interested in others than in himself, and in this fact lies the beauty of the film.8/10

I missed this when it first came out. It never made the theaters in my area. It wasn't well-publicized so I passed over it at the video store. I wish someone would have recommended this to me. This is better than you would expect. The cast is UNBELIEVABLE!! So many good actors who have aged and fit the characters of 1970s underground terrorists perfectly. Robert Redford's directing has always had a bit of heavy drama that isn't necessary, but for the most part this is a very good political thriller in the vein of "All The President's Men" set in modern times.Basic plot: Redford is a well-respected, recently-widowed attorney in New York with a young daughter. A woman is arrested in a nearby town for a bank robbery from 30 years prior and went underground with several other players from that era - including Redford. Suddenly, a tenacious young reporter starts tracking the story and ends up opening a can of worms where domino upon domino falls pushing Redford into hiding and ultimately into revealing a past he might wish had stayed hidden.The acting is first-rate by all involved. I think Redford is really too old to have an 11yo daughter, but that is minor in the scope of the story. The political cat-and-mouse game between the underground members who can't even trust each other at this late date, the dogged FBI who have never stopped looking for them, and the ever-present reporter create a whirlwind of intrigue of "did he/didn't he" until all the pieces start falling into place. The story bobs and weaves through several venues and gives a believability to how difficult it must be to live on the lamb for most of your life. Once you create a family and want to settle down into normalcy must be such a weight and would be heartbreaking to see it blown apart for past transgressions.Kudos to all the actors who were willing to go on screen past their glory years. It added an element of realism we don't get much anymore in today's glamourized Hollywood blockbusters with all the pretty people. This is one I am very thankful I picked up. I will be recommending it to my friends as a good story to keep your interest until the very end. It is well worth your time.

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??