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 +

    

Now playing at home: PEACOCK (PG-13)

Starring: Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Susan Sarandon, Bill Pullman

Director: Michael Lander

Peacock is a straight to DVD release (April 20, 2010) that, remarkably, features some big names in the cast. Irish actor Cillian Murphy shines in the dual role of John and Emma Skillpa--a cross-dressing split personality whose masculine side works as a bank clerk, while his wig clad feminine alter-ego takes on the persona of John's homebody wife. All seems to be going smoothly until a train caboose ends up in John's backyard and threatens to derail his neat little double life when the townspeople of Peacock, Nebraska discover Emma and start to get curious.

Maggie, (Ellen Page) a young single mother on the skids, figures mysteriously into John's past, and holds the key to his weirdness. Like any good psychological drama, the clues are dispersed in increments as the film goes along.

Set in the 1950s, Peacock is a character study tour-de-force, with Murphy alternating between the painfully shy bank clerk persona of John, and the more complex Emma, who is plotting against him to have things ultimately go her way. (And he's awfully pretty as a woman!) It's a Norman Bates-esque performance--and true to form--Emma's increasingly diabolical mindset will lead to some skulduggery before it's all said and done. (As one who grew up in the midwest, the image of a bank standing next to some big grain silos strikes a familiar and an authentic chord. )

Cillian Murphy is so much the standout in this film that it makes you wonder why someone like Susan Sarandon--who plays Fanny Crill, the town mayor's wife--was willing to take on a secondary role that doesn't challenge her in the least. The same with Bill Pullman, who plays John's pain-in-the-ass supervisor at the bank. Ellen Page, as Maggie, is the only other character that is fleshed-out to any degree.

I must put in a word for cross-dressers here, who by and large seem to be a harmless lot--but movies like Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and Peacock, may have given them a bum rap.

RIGHT, DAD?

There aren't any trick endings here--we can pretty much see what's coming as a logical progression of the power struggle between two personalities inhabiting the same body--but I found Peacock growing on me, haunting me if you will, in the days immediately after I saw it...reflecting on the old adage that the child is father to the man.

GRADE: B