The Company You Keep is a 2012 thriller based on the novel by Neil Gordon, and directed by, and starring, Robert Redford, alongside an All-Star Cast that includes Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, Chris Cooper, Sam Elliott, Brendan Gleeson, Terrence Howard, Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick, Brit Marling, Stephen Root, Susan Sarandon, and Stanley Tucci.
Sharon Solarz, former member of the Weather Underground
, turns herself in for her part in a bank robbery in Michigan in the 1970's that resulted in the shooting death of a guard. When Intrepid Reporter Ben Shepherd investigates further, he discovers James Grant, a lawyer who refused to take Solarz's case, is actually Nick Sloan, a suspected accomplice in the robbery. This forces Sloan to go on the run, abandoning his daughter Izzie to the care of his brother Daniel while he tries to find the one person who may be able to clear his name. As Shepherd and the FBI pursue Sloan, Shepherd finds out there's a lot more to the story than he thought there was.
Not to be confused with the 2023 TV show from ABC.
This film contains the following tropes:
- Adaptation Name Change: In the novel, while James Grant was still the alias, his real name was Jason Sinai, and Shepherd's last name was Schulberg.
- Adapted Out: In the novel, Grant's wife was alive, but a drug addict, which is why Grant is raising Izzy. In the movie, Grant is a widower.
- Bait-and-Switch: Done twice:
- The first time, Sloan is on a train when he notices police in the station. He goes into a bathroom to hide because he thinks the police are after him, only to find out they've arrested someone else.
- The second time, Sloan is at Donal's house when he notices headlights. Assuming it's the police, Sloan runs out of the house and up an alley, but notices a car following him. Turns out it's Donal driving up with a car he borrowed for Sloan to use.
- Changed My Mind, Kid: Mimi tells Sloan she refuses to turn herself in, and runs away when the FBI shows up at her and Sloan's old cabin. However, as she's paddling on the lake, she decides to turn around, and we later see she's turned herself in and cleared Sloan's name.
- Clear My Name: Part of Sloan's motivation for running and leaving his daughter behind.
- Decomposite Character: In the novel, Rebecca Osborne was an FBI agent. That role is given to Diana, Shepherd's ex-girlfriend (possibly so he can have a Friend on the Force), and Rebecca is now a student.
- Decoy Protagonist: Solarz is the first person we see (as her husband and children say goodbye to her), and then she gets arrested. After that, the movie shifts its focus to Sloan and Shepherd.
- Da Editor: Ray Fuller, Shepherd's editor, who yells at him for missing the story about Solarz's arrest, praising him for getting the story of Grant's real identity, and then upset again when Shepherd wants to pursue the story elsewhere.
- Fire Alarm Distraction: When Sloan is about to leave the hotel after he sees Daniel has shown up to pick up Izzy, he notices FBI agents have followed Daniel to the hotel. So, Sloan pulls the fire alarm so he can slip away unnoticed during the chaos.
- Friend on the Force: Played straight and then subverted. After Solarz is arrested, Fuller suggest Shepherd contact his ex-girlfriend Diana, who works for the FBI. Diana is not happy to see Shepherd, but she does give him a tip on an old associate of Solarz (and, as it turns out, Sloan's). However, after Shepherd interviews Solarz in her jail cell, and she and her boss Cornelius think he's too sympathetic to Solarz, Diana tells Shepherd not to contact her again.
- Going for the Big Scoop: Played straight and then subverted. Shepherd first does this when he realizes Grant is really Nick Sloan, and chases Sloan's trail because he thinks there's a lot more to the story. He subsequently finds out Nick and Mimi Laurie were part of the group that were involved in the bank robbery, though Nick ultimately decided not to participate, and he also finds out Rebecca is Nick and Mimi's biological daughter. However, when he finds out Mimi has decided to turn herself in for the robbery and exonerate Nick, Shepherd decides not to publish the story so Rebecca, whom he's become attracted to, doesn't have to go through the publicity.
- Happily Adopted: Rebecca has known she was adopted (though not who her real parents are), and loves her father Harry and mother Marianne.
- I Did What I Had to Do:
- When Shepherd interviews Solarz, she explains what she and the rest of the Weather Underground did was all to stop The Vietnam War, though she admits if she had to do it all over again, she would have been smarter and tried to avoid getting people killed. Diana points out to Shepherd that Solarz is using the same rationale all domestic terrorists have used.
- Harry also invokes this trope when explaining why he adopted Rebecca from Nick and Mimi.
- I Have a Family: Nick mentions he has a daughter when he tries to convince Mimi to give herself up for the robbery and convince the authorities he had nothing to do with it.
- Inspector Javert: FBI agent Cornelius, who will stop at nothing to get Sloan. Justified as he thinks Sloan was responsible for the killing of a bank guard.
- No, You: When Mimi and Nick are arguing (both about their time in the Weather Underground and their relationship):Nick: We were done.
Mimi: No, you were done. - Revealing Cover Up: If Grant hasn't evaded Shepherd's questions about why he refused to be Solarz's lawyer (though he does arrange counsel for her), Shepherd wouldn't have become suspicious and investigated Grant.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Discussed by Jed Lewis when Sloan meets up with him, as he thinks what the Weather Underground was doing was wrong-headed, as opposed to what Lewis was doing with SDS. Later, Mimi and Nick get into a similar argument.
