'The Company You Keep' Has Hallmarks Of An Oscar Contender (Trailer & Pictures)

Robert Redford appears to be back on track. Some five years after his disappointing drama 'Lions For Lambs', the Oscar winning director has returned to similar territory with 'The Company You Keep,' a slick looking drama starring an all-star cast. And when we say all-star cast, we really do mean it.

Redford stars and directs in the story of Jim Grant, a public interest lawyer and single father living in New York. Shia LaBeouf plays a scruffy intrepid journalist who exposes Grant as a man wanted for a murder he allegedly committed in his days as an anti-war radical. When another member of the Weather Underground - played by Susan Sarandon - is arrested, LaBeouf's Ben Shepard smells an opportunity to make a name for himself with a national story. The superb Stanley Tucci plays his prickly finger-pointing editor (is it us, or was he born to play a prickly finger-pointing editor?) while the excellent Anna Kendrick plays a vulnerable FBI agent. Elsewhere, there's a gruff looking Nick Nolte, the old-hand Richard Jenkins and legendary western actor Sam Elliott. Oh, and there's Brendan Gleeson. And Terrence Howard. And Julie Christie.

The Company You Keep Trailer

Reviews have been almost unanimously positive, with Mary Corliss of Time magazine writing, "With a welcome mixture of juice and grit, the movie dramatizes the lingering conundrums of young people in the time of the Vietnam morass." Leslie Felperin of Variety said, "The pic's colorful, almost-wastefully impressive cast limns a sociologically convincing rogue's gallery of reformed revolutionaries." It's already featuring in early lists for possible Oscar contenders in 2014.

As well as its cast, the political-drama boasts a decent pedigree behind the camera. Redford himself directs, while the script was penned by Lem Dobbs, best known for The Score, Haywire and Dark City.

Based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Neil Gordon, 'The Company You Keep' hits a limited amount of theaters in the U.S. 5 April 2013 before getting a full opening in the UK on June 7 2013.

Shia LaBeuouf as Ben Shepard & Robert Redford as Jim Grant in The Company You Keep

Susan Sarandon as Sharon Solarz and Sam Elliott as Mac McLeod in The Company You Keep

Terrence Howard as Cornelius & Nick Nolte as Donal in The Company You Keep

 
Richard Jenkins as Jed Lewis and Anna Kendrick as Diana in The Company You Keep

 
Chris Cooper as Daniel Sloan and Julie Christie as Mimi Lurie in The Company You Keep 

 
Ben Shepard with Henry Osborne played by Shia LaBeouf and Brendan Gleeson respectively in The Company You Keep