The Company You Keep 2012

     Jim Grant is a successful attorney with a young daughter.  He lost his wife in a car accident a year ago.  One thing everyone doesn’t know about Jim is that he is a former member of the Weather Underground.  He has been hiding out for years since the group staged a bank heist that resulted in the death of a guard.  A zealous newspaper reporter gets on Jim’s trail after the FBI picks up Sharon Solarz at a gas station.  She was also an Underground member and the FBI had been monitoring her by wiretap until the right time to take her into custody.  Jim is really Nick Sloan and he goes into action as soon as his cover is blown.  He has his brother pickup his daughter at their hotel room and he leaves the city by train.  His old friend Donal helps him, he gets him a car and gives him information about some of the other Underground members.

     This is complex and intriguing but you don’t feel anything for the characters even with an all-star cast.  They just appear out of nowhere and you only see a small old television clip of the bank robbery.  Not much information is given about their group and their previous activities?  3* (This movie is OK)

122 min, Drama directed by Robert Redford with Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Terrence Howard, Stanley Tucci, Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick, Brendan Gleeson, Brit Marling, Sam Elliott.

Note:  Blockbuster 2 ½*, imdb 6.3 out of 10, 55% critic 46% audience on Rotten Tomatoes.

Special Note:  The Weather Underground Organization was founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan in 1969.  They were originally called the Weathermen and they were faction of the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society.  SDS was a revolutionary party for the overthrow of the US government.  They were involved with Black Power and opposition to the Vietnam War.  They conducted a campaign of bombings through the mid-1970’s and took part in the jailbreak of Timothy Leary.  The WUO grew out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) faction of SDS.  Their name came from a Bob Dylan song lyric, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”