How’s the Weather Underground?

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Maybe I’m just a sucker for a movie that says a reporter can make a difference (and that journalist is played by Shia LeBeouf? See, anyone can do it!), yet Robert Redford’s upcoming thriller The Company You Keep is one film that is strangely under the radar—perhaps a lack of major distributor has something to do with it—but definitely on my must-see list for 2013.

The film follows a young reporter who thinks he’s discovered the new identity of a former member of The Weather Underground, a radical anti-Vietnam War organization responsible for a series of bombings and riots and other violent incidents—including aiding the jailbreak of LSD champion Dr. Timothy Leary—on U.S. soil during that controversial conflict in Southeast Asia. While, historically, most of those involved were apprehended, some infamously were not, and presumably vanished. Company follows the pursuit of a man, played by Redford, who may or may not have been one of these “weathermen” in his youth.

With Steven Soderbergh cohort Lem Dobbs (The Limey, Dark City) behind the screenplay and a barrel of talented supporting actors—Anna Kendrick, Stanley Tucci, Brit Marling, Julie Christie, and Richard Jenkins just to name a few—Company is loaded with talent top to bottom.

As a former Weather Underground member arrested and questioned, Susan Sarandon, who swung from sweet-talkin’ temptress to wise-crackin’ grandma awfully quick a decade or more ago, seems to have finally found a role that stretches her talent in new and interesting ways, like a high-minded rat in a trap. “We made some mistakes,” Sarandon rationalizes, “but we were right.” So is Redford trying to elicit some kind of moral high-ground-despite-the-fallout empathy for a former domestic terrorist, or is Company a clever, politically charged update of The Fugitive? As a character study and pulse-pounding drama, either would be fine by me. Just don’t shoot the reporter.

The Company You Keep arrives April 5 in limited release. Watch the trailer below: