When will Robert Redford accept that he isn't ageless? He looked silly enough at 62 as a romantic lead opposite 38-year-old Kristin Scott Thomas in The Horse Whisperer. Here, at 76, playing a former member of the Weather Underground, he looks flat-out ridiculous.
He was 36 - far too old for radical chic - when that leftie protest group dedicated to the violent overthrow of the US Government was formed in 1969. On screen here he looks like Methuselah with a hangover and the fact that he is the widowed father of a 7-year-old daughter makes matters worse.
Perhaps the decision was budgetary; Redford the producer wouldn't have had to pay a fee to Redford the actor (or to Redford the director for that matter) from the indie film's US$1 million budget. But it's a fatal flaw in the whole set-up.
And not the only one. Like his last two films, The Conspirator and Lions for Lambs, this is a well-intentioned drama to which Redford has attracted a cast of top names. But it's clunky and schematic in the way it deals with its weighty moral themes: can dissent legitimise violence? Does political purity trump personal loyalty? What are the obligations of journalism?
Redford plays liberal small-town lawyer Nick Sloan who comes to the attention of reporter (LaBeouf) when he refuses to take the case of a former Weather Underground member, Sharon Solarz (Sarandon), who is arrested 40 years after the killing of a guard in a Weather Underground bank raid.
