The Company You Keep

I did not know of The Company You Keep, a movie released in 2013. This is amazing because the cast alone is worthy of watching this movie. The cast includes four actors (Robert Redford, Susan Sarandon, Chris Cooper and Julie Christie) who have won Academy Awards and five others (Anna Kendrick, Richard Jenkins, Nick Nolte, Terrence Howard and Stanley Tucci) who have been nominated for Academy Awards. Besides this I was in the mood to be taken back to the turbulent years of the protests against the war in Vietnam and society in general. I was at ground zero attending the University of Maryland, College Park, a short drive to the National Mall where many protests occurred.

What, then, is the theme of this really good movie. When revolutionary ideals surrender to the realities of adult life, how does a former activist live with the consequences of their youthful decisions? Small-town lawyer Jim Grant (Redford) is faced with this reality when he hears the news that Susan Solarz (Sarandon), a long-ago member of the Weather Underground who has lived incognito as a quiet housewife and mother, had been arrested and charged with murder for her radical activities in the ’70s. For Jim, the question is not academic. Under his real name, Nick Sloan, he had been one of Solarz’s comrades in the bombings of government buildings at exactly that period when political idealism died and transformed into lethal criminality.

The story follows Ben, an eager reporter who tries to impress his prickly editor (Tucci) regarding the story of the capture of Solarz. Ben exploits his access to Diana (Anna Kendrick), a college hookup now working for the FBI. Despite warnings from her boss Cornelius (Howard) to back off, Ben persists, digging for insights. His legwork reveals that while Jim has long been a respected community member, raising his 11-year-old daughter Isabel (Jacqueline Evancho) alone since the death of his wife in an accident a year earlier, no record of him exists before 1979. Putting two and two together, Ben discovers, just ahead of the Feds, that Jim is Nick Sloan, another Weatherman.

That's all I will say other than this is an excellent movie that I think anyone would enjoy watching.