Robert Redford’s Weather Underground thriller is a thoughtful gripping story of the human cost of political radicalism. Examining how youthful life choices of 60s anti-Vietnam activists have affected them 30 years after the event, this is a thoughtful, tense and intelligent thriller.
Jim Grant (Robert Redford) plays a small town lawyer whose sympathies with middle aged mum Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) raise suspicions after she is exposed and arrested by the FBI for her part in violent 60s radicalism. Young tyro reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBoeuf) starts to probe Grant’s past and uncovers a history of idealism and conflict which makes him question his own dormant idealism.
As the law slowly closes in on Grant we see how human cost of living a double life over so many years and the film is terrific at showing what these men and women sacrificed for their beliefs over the course of many decades. Long after their causes have been forgotten or co-opted by the mainstream, the law grinds implacably, remorselessly and unsympathetically on.
The desperation and anguish of these children of the 60s, now entering their twilight years is captured magnificently with a great cast including Julie Christie, Richard Jenkins and Nick Nolte. This really delivers both as a The Fugitive style action thriller but even more so as a film about aging and the consequences of trying to get on and live a normal life, including raising children, while always looking over your shoulder.