The Beef has insisted that he is done with box-office dominating, female-body ogling, critic-proof franchise Transformers and so, as all actors must, he will be considering where next?
Apparently, he is to team up with Robert Redford, who will do his usual multi-hyphenate job as producer-director-star of “The Company You Keep”, working from the Lem Dobbs-penned script about a young, ambitious reporter (LaBeouf) who in his desperation to make a name for himself attempts to track down a former political militant who the FBI have been after for 30-odd years. Guess who’ll play the militant? Yep.
The source material is a novel by Neil Gordon and Redford’s production company are now looking to secure a distribution deal for the picture, which should start shooting in the autumn. This isn’t the first time that Redford has teamed up with a younger buck, having worked with Brad Pitt on Spy Game some years ago. Presumably this pairing would hope to draw on both the younger-audience appeal of the Beef and the natural gravitas of Redford himself.
Given Redford’s own political proclivities, it seems likely that the film will lean into the political ideology and context of Redford’s character. Whether this will result in the film getting bogged down in the sort of preachy tone that plagued Lions for Lambs, it is hard to tell, but hopefully a political message can be delivered, while still retaining the beating heart of a thriller. More on this, as always, as we get it.
