Terrorists aren’t oceans away; they are in our midst. The radical freedom fighters that were born out of ‘60s rebellion are on full display in The Company You Keep, an enthralling though not quite fully satisfying reminder that this term, which was still used only once in the film, is but a name for ideological fierceness and misguided passions that have a role in this country’s history as much as that of any foreign land.
Directed by Robert Redford, the film is a retrospective look at homegrown terrorism—of the best intentions, but terrorism nonetheless. The anti-government Weather Underground Organization took their radical activism against U.S. participation in the Vietnam War to the absolute extreme by killing a security guard in their violent 1970 Michigan bank robbery. While perhaps lacking in factual accuracy, the film spins a compelling tale of how each member’s life spiraled out of control 30 years later.
Robert Redford gives a stellar performance as the protagonist—Jim Grant, a Weather Underground member-turned-lawyer-turned-fugitive. His upstanding nobility inspires the support, yet suspicion, of viewers as questions about his actual guilt remain unanswered.
The film successfully evokes certain questions regarding this paradox that characterizes all freedom fighters—whether we can still vilify them once cognizant of their motivations, and if we can justify civilian attacks when peaceful means failing. I was intrigued by each member’s innocuous and domesticated home lives in contrast with their revolutionary mindsets, and it was a sensitive rendering of the two motivations that gave each character depth.
30 years on, the veteran freedom fighters bear the distinct mien of the weary, and yet expertly elude the FBI—evidence that the fiery passion of their youth is all but extinguished.
Shia LeBoeuf does what he does best—charming and annoying your socks off as a pesky-but-brilliant small-time reporter named Ben Shepard. Young, provocative, and unstoppable in his quest for facts, he embodies the Weather Underground youths in their heyday. The relationship between his character and Redford’s wizened revolutionary Grant is one of distance and suspicion, however, as Grant accuses Shepard—and by extension, his generation—of hollow ambition. Though crotchety, this stand seems to point to the reality of revolution today being a muted version of that in the past, when fiery political movements were full of red-blooded life that just doesn’t come across in a tame tweet.
Despite this intriguing commentary undergirding the narrative, however, the film’s resolution was somewhat abrupt and lacking in explanation, appearing rosier than reality would suggest. Restricting this kind of story to the confines of a Hollywood thriller formula does it a disservice, sweeping under the rug the inter-generational tension that grounds Redford’s drama and the legitimate questions it arouses about the death of idealism for the sake of tidy plot structure. For all its glorification of revolutionary fervor, The Company You Keep doesn’t color far outside the lines.
