The Weather Underground was a radical left militant organisation active in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s. It was a revolutionary body that was responsible for a series of riots, bombings and jailbreaks. As a subject for a mainstream film, therefore, it is not obvious that this is a sympathetic proposition for American audiences and it is an essentially unknown topic for non-American viewers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it is something of an oddity that Robert Redford in his mid 70s should choose to produce and direct this work and take the lead role as a former Weatherman exposed many decades later by an ambitious local reporter. Another surprise is to see Julie Christie (in her early 70s) coming out of retirement to play a co-conspirator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is an amazing cast list which includes four Oscar winners – Redford and Christie plus Susan Sarandon and Chris Cooper – and five Oscar nominees – Anna Kendrick, Richard Jenkins, Nick Nolte, Terrence Howard, and Stanley Tucci. Add Shia LaBeouf, Sam Elliot and Brendan Gleeson and you have almost as many stars as the Milky Way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it is disappointing that the film, though workmanlike and watchable, is not more exciting. It probably worked better as the novel on which it is based.
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The Weather Underground was a radical left militant organisation active in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s. It was a revolutionary body that was responsible for a series of riots, bombings and jailbreaks. As a subject for a mainstream film, therefore, it is not obvious that this is a sympathetic proposition for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25821"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25837,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25821\/revisions\/25837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}