ALL IS LOST (2013)

Rated: PG-13

STARS: Robert Redford
DIRECTOR: J.C. Chandor
GENRE: Action--Adventure/ Suspense

Going to a movie called All Is Lost,  you may psych yourself into being depressed by the time you hit  your seat.  Sometimes a title is meant to mislead you. Not here.  Robert Redford's character is in trouble from the get-go. He's piloting a small yacht  in the middle of the Indian Ocean , and his craft has just collided with a huge railroad type shipping container. Now there's a hole in the side of the boat, and it's taking on water. 

Plot aficionados, this won't be your cup of tea. Because there is only one question--will he or won't he survive?  If you enjoy character-driven drama,  you're S. O. L. as well.  We learn next to nothing of the man. Not his name, nor why he has embarked upon his foolhardy journey. He apparently has a family somewhere. But then, most people do.

All Is Lost is pure action and a man's will to survive. Redford gets jostled about in the craft during storms and knocks his head. He tries unsuccessfully to send a mayday call on his radio. He climbs up and down the mast and does other manly type things. He charts his course on a map and sees that he is drifting toward the shipping lanes, and potential rescue. But will help arrive in time before he runs out of food and water, or becomes some shark's dinner entree?

There is one moment of comic relief where the man rears back and lets fly with an expletive to ring through the universe. You would too in his predicament.  It's a truly existential moment. Why are we here? What the hell is going on? The only entreaty to the gods that seems to make any sense is:  F_  _ K!!!!!!

All Is Lost is a unique kind of movie that won't challenge you much, in the sense that if  you nod off for a minute or two, you haven't missed anything. You may wonder why Robert Redford would make such a film. I think it's because he wanted to demonstrate what a tough and spry old fart he is at age 77.

GRADE:  C +

JILL'S TAKE

As I watched this movie, I kept thinking of nasty headlines I could write: "Stick to directing, Bobby!" "All will be lost at the box office with this turkey!" or"See Spot Sink." I know, I know. It's mean-spirited of me. But so is ALL IS LOST.  Mean-spirited in the sense that it totally disregards the needs of the average film-goer. Now if you're an avid sailor, that's different. Or if—like most men—you are map-obsessed, ALL IS LOST will certainly keep you 'on course.' Just out of curiosity, I looked around the theater and I'd say 80% of the audience was male.

Yes, Mr. Redford is certainly nimble for his age. But the dyed hair (possibly enhanced by a wig?) and withering biceps were a dead giveaway. Much as I liked him in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,  I've always felt Redford's performances were pretty wooden. As a director, however, the man is a genius.

While trying not to nod off, I developed a mad-on for Redford's character labeled in the credits as "Our Man." People whose egos are so huge they think they can overcome any and all obstacles piss me off. This guy reminded me of the bear activist in Grizzly Man who thought he could communicate with grizzlies -- to learn too late that he was wrong. Part of me was hoping Our Man would get eaten by the sea. Oh well. The underwater photography was beautiful.

GRADE: D

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP (2013)

Rated:  PG-13

Stars: Robert Redford,  Shia LaBeouf,  Susan Sarandon, Julie Christie

Director: Robert Redford

Genre: Mystery/Suspense, Political Thriller 


The Boston Marathon bombing has given The Company You Keep  a kind of relevance and topicality it might not otherwise have appeared to possess. The film pings upon historical events from the politically turbulent sixties and seventies to present a fictionalized story that bears the ring of authenticity.   

The Weather Underground, which came to be known as the Weathermen, grew out of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the late sixties.  It was a revolutionary group that conducted bombings of U.S. government buildings, and other targets, primarily in protest of the Vietnam war. As the movie opens,  a  former member of the group, Sharon Solarz, (Susan Sarandon) who had been hiding out as a suburban housewife, is preparing to turn herself in for her part in a bank robbery that turned deadly back in the seventies.  (Look up Sara Jane Olsen, aka Kathleen Soliah!) 

The ensuing publicity results in one of her cohorts, lawyer Jim Grant, being ferreted out by  cub reporter Ben Shepard, (Shia LaBeouf) who is still cutting his teeth at an Albany, New York newspaper.  Grant (Robert Redford) is in reality Nick Sloan, and he may or may not be guilty of having participated in that same robbery. He goes on the run to attempt to prove his innocence, and in the process reunites with some of his old comrades, which gives Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins, and Julie Christie a reason to be in this movie.  

Sloan is particularly anxious to hook up with his old flame, Mimi Lurie, (Julie Christie) who, unlike some of the others, hasn't developed a different perspective through the passage of time. (Christie, who is now in her early seventies, is eerily reminiscent of Katherine Hepburn here.)  Lurie is unapologetic for carrying the same ideals that galvanized her, and many of her contemporaries back in the day, to demonstrate what people power can actually accomplish by bringing an unjust war to an end.  When their clandestine meeting finally occurs,  Lurie still has fire in her eyes--still railing against a system that brought us Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the loss of so many innocent lives on all sides. 

 I think it was Redford's intention, by taking on this project,  to give a little poke at a society that has grown complacent in many ways--and to say HEY, the questions raised in the Vietnam era haven't gone away--they are still here, as relevant today as they ever were. 

To those too young to have lived through these events, The Company You Keep may simply seem to be relating a tale of homegrown terrorism from another era.  Baby boomers are more likely to grasp the complexity of the issues that existed at the time. And while there is  no disputing that  their actions were tragically misguided, the difference between organizations like The Weathermen and the Boston bombers is that the former believed that they loved their country, whereas the latter apparently hated it. 

That said, The Company You Keep  does a good job of bringing some balanced perspective to an era that becomes ever more misunderstood as time passes and we grow farther and farther away from the fact. Efforts to try to rewrite history for the purpose of promoting a particular agenda are something that should be vigilantly guarded against.

There are some intriguing twists and turns, and a few loose ends don't get tied up at the conclusion, but beyond the nuts and bolts of the plot, The Company You Keep is a thoughtful attempt to examine still relevant questions about the use and misuse of government power.

Grade:  B +