The Company You Keep Reviews
Paste Magazine
Rather than illuminating hard truths about decisions made in the context of domestic oppression and uprising, the film instead bogs itself down in ambiguous moralizing, voiding the audience's ability to root for any interest or character.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6.5/10
Flicks.co.nz
Dreadfully near-catatonic pace that never makes you feel like there's much at stake.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Austin American-Statesman
It's a big thing done in mediocre fashion, with a mystifying contempt for the audience's intelligence and faith.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
Las Vegas Weekly
Although the movie is structured as a thriller, there's no urgency or suspense.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Top CriticWhat gets revealed should rattle, but it doesn't.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
A thoroughly stodgy exploration of the ghosts of the past that has exceedingly little to say about the Vietnam era, the ethics of violent protest or the standards of what's left of the newspaper business.
The film was shot by an excellent cinematographer, Adriano Goldman, though you'd never know it from the lighting, which is as flat as the writing.
Screenwize
You may be in the company of an all-star cast, but this is a run-of-the-mill affair with few surprises.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
amNewYork
A sincere thriller that feels like it has arrived at least a half-decade behind schedule.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
tonymacklin.net
Robert Redford -- who once was an active liberal -- is now a tired capitalist. He's also a worn-out egotist.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/5
"It winds up being less than the sum of its parts."
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Nearly every scene had me asking questions about what just transpired when I should have been absorbing what was happening next.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Redford's film almost, kinda, semi-touches on some fascinating stuff.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Film Racket
It's a seeming impossibility: a middlebrow film about extremists.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
As an audience, we're forced to admit that the guy we're rooting for could be a sap. This is not a recommended method.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
WBAI Radio
Outsider looking in fictional history perhaps exonerating Redford rather than those underground anti-imperialist fugitives distorted in his movie - not to mention a conveniently disappeared Cointelpro - for possibly his own lack of commitment back then.
ColeSmithey.com
[VIDEO ESSAY] A movie in search of a story, this Robert Redford-directed flop has all the interest and suspense of a piece of burnt toast.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
RedEye
What begins as a crackling, '70s-style political thriller drags into a chatty, less-than-gripping drama that criticizes the press only to undermine its purpose.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Screen International
However good your characters and however telling the social and ethical issues your raise, if you ain't got tension, you ain't got a thriller -- and it's in this department that The Company You Keep mostly fails to deliver.
Given the finger-wagging suggestion of its title, it's actually no surprise to find that The Company You Keep turns out to be politically chicken-hearted ...
