The Company You Keep.

 The Company You Keep.

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP is a beautifully crafted thriller and certainly the best film Robert Redford has directed in several years. The film brings to vivid life a time when terrorists in America didn't mean foreigners but were home-grown, and dedicated, opponents of the government.  An intelligent screenplay by Lem Dobbs, based on a novel by Neil Gordon allows Redford to create plenty of tension and to raise questions of loyalty and principle

The next movie I want to see The Hunt  from director Thomas Vinterberg for which MADS MIKKELSEN won Best Actor.  He plays Lucas, who is filling in as assistant at a kindergarten because the school where he was teaching closed down.  He's not having a good time of it with a messy divorce behind him, separation from his son Marcus - but at least he has his mates, chief of which is Theo -  A group of them go hunting every year in a tradition of male bonding. But then disaster strikes. Unwittingly Theo's young daughter Klara implies that Lucas has acted inappropriately, sexually with her.   All that male bonding was for nothing, Lucas' friendships melt away, his place in the community is lost, he's the object of cruelty and violence.

This is not a new story, however it's been handled superbly by Vinterberg working with co-screenwriter Tobias Lindholm. We, the audience are in a privileged position. We know Lucas is innocent and we can only watch in anguish as the life of this decent man falls in a heap. It's really about the fragility of trust in relationships, particularly when the subject of child sexual abuse rears its ugly head. Performances are just astoundingly good, Mikkelsen deserved his win in Cannes. There's a wonderful compassion at the heart of this film, and it's in the character of Lucas for whom nothing will ever be the same again.