Robert Redford Keeps Revolutionary'Company'
Ben also travels to Michigan, tracking the story from a different direction. He interviews a retired police officer (Brendan Gleeson) who worked on the bank-robbery case. Ben also pursues the ex-cop's daughter (Brit Marling), a law student who initially thinks the reporter has a romantic interest in her — perhaps because he sort of does.
A high-profile cast like this one can be a distraction, but Redford neatly uses the familiar faces to conjure the '70s. Old photos of some of them, including Redford with a mustache that can only be called groovy, instantly evoke the era. The technique recalls The Limey, a '90s film that used '60s footage of star Terence Stamp — and was scripted by Lem Dobbs, who also wrote this movie.
Films that take '70s revolutionaries seriously, common in Europe, are rare in the U.S. So it's no surprise when the personal ultimately trumps the political. The movie doesn't entirely dodge New Left views: Sarandon does a fine job with a speech in which Sharon expresses her willingness to do it all again, but "smarter."
But Sharon abandoned the clandestine life because of her kids, and Redford's '70s flashback ultimately becomes — like such predecessors as Running on Empty and German director Christian Petzold's The State I Am In — a parenting parable. There's even a hint of the stolen-kid thriller Gone Baby Gone in a fairly predictable plot twist.
Before settling into such comfortable territory, however, the movie is propulsive and involving. If The Company You Keep is far from radical, it's pretty audacious by the standards of counterrevolutionary Hollywood.