The Company You Keep is a enjoyable movie – it has a fun story idea, they wrote some basically decent dialog, and it features a lot of really good, old actors who give nice performances and are fun to watch. Hell, it’s just great to see Robert Redford in one more movie. I had certain issues with the film, and I’m not sure I would even call it a “good” film, but it is diverting, dignified, and no one gets shot, and for these reasons alone it is worth seeing.

This film does not have much to say about the Weather Underground. This group and their beliefs basically serve only to set up a smaller, human drama of Robert Redford as a fugitive on the run and Shia LaBeouf as a journalist chasing down the truth about Redford. This human drama has some twists and turns – it’s not a bad story – but the problem is that the film’s structural writing leaves a lot to be desired. The unfolding of information feels very mechanical, clunky, and unexciting. Redford stays here, he stays there, he calls so-and-so, they tell him thus-and-such – the feeling watching it might be described as watching an outline of a story. There’s no depth, no texture, and surprisingly little suspense. What’s more, LaBeouf’s character is clearly set up as a point of unification for all the little bits and pieces of the story, but then they also tell the all the bits of the story outside of his character, making him strangely superfluous. Put simply, the narrative is labored and its execution confused.

The film’s scene structure is largely a series of one-on-one vignettes between the various supporting actors and either Redford or LaBeouf. The dialog in these vignettes is decent, sometimes pretty good, and is for the most part well-executed by the great old actors who populate these supporting roles. But the scenes are not written well enough to convey much of anything deeper about the characters. You come away from this film knowing almost nothing about Redford or LaBeouf, except that Redford had some secrets, and LaBeouf found them out. Clearly it’s not the kind of film you would ever need to watch again.

Nevertheless, this film might have worked a lot better had it not been for the disastrous casting of Shia LaBeouf. LaBeouf is a terrible actor, and his performance takes a hatchet to every part of the film he’s involved in. Almost everything that comes out of his mouth is embarrassing, as is his near total inability to manipulate his facial expressions, and his complete lack of skill as a physical actor. It is painful to watch his artless hacking in scenes opposite wonderful actors like Susan Sarandon, Chris Cooper, Brendan Gleeson, Brit Marling, and even Redford himself. LaBeouf is so bad that these fine actors couldn’t even partially rescue his performance – he single-handedly destroys many scenes that even an average actor would have been able to pull off. Frankly, I don’t understand how Redford could have miscalculated so badly in casting him, unless he was simply obsessed with getting someone who sort of looked and behaved vaguely like Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men.

After the movie, my wife and I entertained ourselves figuring out who should have been cast in this role. James McAvoy leapt to my mind – he would have been great, a fine actor with excellent judgement and subtleness, and warm and charismatic as well. My wife had the novel idea of switching LaBeouf and Anna Kendrick in their roles, letting the very skilled Kendrick bring her personal magic to the part of the tenacious journalist, while relegating LaBeouf to a role small enough to prevent him from inflicting too much damage. At any rate, someone else was needed in that role – almost anyone, frankly.

As I mentioned, many fine actors got involved in this project as supporting players. Unfortunately the results of this all-star amalgamation were all over the place, ranging from horrible (Terence Howard,) to largely wasted (Anna Kendrick, Sam Elliott, Chris Cooper,) to window-dressing roles (Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon,) to over-acted (Nick Nolte,) to solid and unflashy (Redford,) to really good (Brit Marling, Brendan Gleeson, Richard Jenkins.) On the whole, however, this fine group of supporting players make the film as enjoyable as it is, through their skill, charisma, and star presence.

The Company You Keep: It’s far from great, but it is certainly worth seeing if you enjoy this kind of film.