The Company You Keep
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: April 5, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
57
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
20
Mixed:
11
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
ObserverRex ReedApr 2, 2013
It’s only April, but this is one of the best films of 2013. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanApr 4, 2013
Though consistently engaging, Redford’s latest directorial endeavor does feel like a plea. You can almost hear him coaxing us to learn from the past, even as we rush into the future. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMar 11, 2013
Lent distinguishing heft by its roster of screen veterans, this gripping drama provides an absorbing reflection on the courage and cost of dissent. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaApr 18, 2013
Directed in steady fashion by Redford, The Company You Keep manages to keep its multiple strands of plot - and the people caught in them - from collapsing in a jumble of confusion. This alone, given the whirl of personal and political history going on, is an accomplishment. Read full review
75
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanApr 11, 2013
At its core, The Company You Keep is a good, solid thriller about a fugitive trying to clear his name. But it’s a much more interesting movie at the edges. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigApr 5, 2013
The stars make this political drama engrossing, despite its few missteps. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversApr 4, 2013
There's enough plot to stuff a miniseries, but Redford never loses sight of the human drama. Martyrdom is not conferred, nor is reinvention equated with redemption. Drawing skillfully on a first-rate cast, Redford builds a riveting, resonant political thriller that values the complexity of its characters and the intelligence of its audience. Read full review
70
The New YorkerDavid DenbyApr 8, 2013
Redford’s patient earnestness — not always a virtue in his earlier work as a director — produces something honorable and absorbing. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyApr 4, 2013
The Company You Keep is a shrewder, more satisfying piece of filmmaking than we've seen from Redford in a while, though not quite in the league with his best behind-the-camera work. Read full review
70
NPRMark JenkinsApr 4, 2013
Before settling into such comfortable territory, however, the movie is propulsive and involving. If The Company You Keep is far from radical, it's pretty audacious by the standards of counterrevolutionary Hollywood. Read full review
70
TimeMary CorlissMar 30, 2013
With a welcome mixture of juice and grit, the movie dramatizes the lingering conundrums of young people in the time of the Vietnam morass. Read full review
70
VarietyLeslie FelperinMar 30, 2013
Robert Redford’s unabashedly heartfelt but competent tribute to 1960s idealism. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenApr 25, 2013
This chase film combines elements of the thriller and newspaper procedural to create a contemporary saga about political idealism, stone-cold realities, and the repercussions of past deeds on future innocents. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerApr 5, 2013
Equal parts preachy and melodramatic, The Company You Keep never quite figures out what it wants to be. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsApr 26, 2013
Redford is an adequate director, and he keeps things moving at a moderate pace, passing up exits to more spectacular vistas or hotter issues. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenApr 25, 2013
In The Company You Keep, old radicals never die – they just turn into old actors. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 11, 2013
LeBeouf may yet mature into an American James McAvoy — a charismatically spineless leading man — but Sarandon and her character have him and his character for lunch. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 11, 2013
The movie struggles to turn the story into a paradoxical easygoing thriller, befitting the age bracket of its key ensemble members. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 10, 2013
Despite Redford's sure-handed (but typically stolid) direction, an intriguing premise and a cast filled with top-line talent both veteran and relatively new, nearly every scene had me asking questions about what just transpired when I should have been absorbing what was happening next. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreApr 3, 2013
Robert Redford delivers one last lecture on ’60s idealism and passes another baton to Shia LaBeouf in The Company You Keep, an engrossing thriller about the last anti-Vietnam War radicals still underground. Read full review
60
Total FilmKate StablesMay 20, 2013
Well-crafted, well-intentioned and well, just a tad dull. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottApr 26, 2013
Ends up being an enjoyable, if only marginally memorable, ride. Read full review
60
Time OutDavid FearApr 2, 2013
Redford’s devotion to old-school liberalism and ’70s socially informed dramas has been a directorial-career constant, and at its best, The Company You Keep feels like a movie you’d have seen in 1975 — one informed by political righteousness and made for adults. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubNathan RabinApr 3, 2013
The result feels like cinematic health food: vaguely good for you but less than delicious. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanApr 3, 2013
Shia LaBeouf, who appears to be on hand to prove that a movie with a crusading newspaper reporter can still exist, perks up his scenes, and Redford acts with his usual hyperalert, placid control. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianMarc MohanApr 18, 2013
As far as the company Redford keeps, I liked it better when he hung out with Paul Newman and Sydney Pollack, but those days are long gone. Read full review
50
New York PostLou LumenickApr 4, 2013
The disappointing The Company You Keep consistently stretches credulity way past the breaking point in its depiction of journalism, police procedure and political activism. Read full review
50
The New York TimesStephen HoldenApr 4, 2013
This earnest, well-intentioned movie elicits frustration that its story had to be packaged as a conventional, not very suspenseful fugitive thriller with a bogus Hollywood ending. Read full review
50
Film.comLaremy LegelMar 11, 2013
The Company You Keep at least manages to maintain an audience’s interest for a solid 80 percent of the film. The ending is a slight flop, which keeps the film from an overall recommendation, and in the stark light of day, it seems fairly evident not everything adds up. Read full review
42
The PlaylistSimon AbramsMar 11, 2013
Even with so many talented actors involved, there’s nothing really galvanizing or particularly provocative about Redford’s latest. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriApr 7, 2013
As a piece of suspense, it ain’t exactly "North by Northwest," or even "Three Days of the Condor"; the awkward attempts at chase scenes make it clear that Redford the actor, who has always given off a slightly lugubrious air, has lost a step or two physically. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineChris CabinMar 31, 2013
A would-be thriller masquerading a long, dry monument to the reliability and comfort of community, blindly cocooned by its own nostalgic self-regard. Read full review
30
Arizona RepublicApr 11, 2013
Long-winded, tiresome and free of any tension, The Company You Keep will ultimately be remembered as a Redford vanity project, in every sense of the word. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternApr 4, 2013
The story is rooted in a political past that never comes to life, and its structure is so cockeyed that we don't even get to see Nick's reaction to a climactic surprise that takes place off-screen. 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. Read full review
30
Village VoiceMichael AtkinsonApr 2, 2013
Far from engaged, the film practically surrenders in an arthritic faint. Read full review
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