Note that this is not “Top Five Best…”
If it were that, the unquestioned winner would be “All the President’s Men.” I just watched it again recently, on Criterion. Every few years, I go back and watch it again, and every time, I’m more amazed at how much great it is. It’s the verisimilitude. Nobody’s trying to be cute, or sexy, or fun. It’s deadly realistic. The interviews conducted with people who really, really don’t want to be talking to these two reporters — the awkwardness of both the sources and the reporters themselves, polished stars that they were — is astounding. Other people like slick. I’m impressed by real.
But on this sad day, I thought I’d go with fun. What were the Redford flicks I enjoyed the most? Here they are:
- The Natural — It’s only my third-fave sports flick, but it’s my favorite baseball movie (with “Major League” a close runner-up, I think), and you can’t say fairer than that.
- All The President’s Men — OK, so Roy Hobbs only knocked it down a notch, but that’s because my appreciation grows each time I see it. I gave it a very favorable review in my first job at a newspaper. But I like it even better now. It’s just not, you know, baseball.
- Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid — When it came out, I loved it so much that I couldn’t imagine these actors doing anything to top it (and “The Sting” didn’t even match it, despite the obvious effort). So good. Of course, it was sort of a neo-Western, with that Burt Bacharach music. Something special.
- Three Days of the Condor — Generally, I’m not a huge fan of paranoia movies (“The CIA’s out to get me!”) But this one really worked. Part of that was Max von Sydow as the freelance assassin.
- The Candidate — This one’s less-known, but it was great. The story of a candidate who didn’t want to win — and how difficult it is to maintain such insouciance in the all-enveloping atmosphere of a campaign. And it had Peter Boyle in it, as the guy who enticed him into running.
Anyway, I think those are my faves. How about you?
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Good selection. I might flip 1 and 2.
Yeah… after I said all that stuff about “All the President’s Men” being the best but not necessarily my favorite, I got to thinking that maybe it was my fave, too.
But I do really love “The Natural.” Of course, it’s classic Hollywood, and nothing like the book. Hobbs in Malamud’s novel wasn’t even a likable character, as I recall — lacking in most forms of appeal aside from being a great ballplayer. And in the movie, he’s admirable, lofty, someone to regard with misty sentimentality and hope that he wins. But that’s kind of the way I feel about baseball, so it works perfectly for me.
Sure, George Will’s Men at Work is probably more realistic about the modern game, but I still tend to romanticize the game.
Despite that, I don’t see the mushy “Field of Dreams” as being nearly as good. I didn’t even like Ray Liotta’s portrayal of Shoeless Joe, as much as I normally like him. Really? That guy’s supposed to be from South Carolina?
D.B. Sweeney was 100 times better in “Eight Men Out”…
I think “The Sting” has to be in the Top 5 somewhere. That’s such a good movie. Redford’s character is looking for revenge, but doesn’t know how to get it; Newman’s character is the old master; and Shaw is great as the villain.
“Spy Game” is also a great movie that I would put in my Top 5. Redford’s character is the retiring CIA officer who has a great backstory, Pitt’s character is the young idealist, and there’s so many great scenes, twists, and funny moments. I love this movie.
One that might not make many people’s list is “Sneakers”. It’s an early 90s movie where Redford and a great cast (Aykroyd, Kingsley, Poitier, Phoenix (River)) of characters have a fun time chasing a MacGuffin.
My last one is a bit of a stretch, but I associate it with Redford. “A River Runs Through It” is directed by Redford. When it first came out, I went to see it, mistakenly thinking that Redford was IN it. I kept watching the movie waiting for him to appear on screen, and only after it was over did I realize that he wasn’t going to be in it. He directed it, and he does the narrator’s voice over, which is absolutely pitch perfect. One of my all-time favorite movies.
i was going to come up with a list but Bryan nailed it… i would add Jeremiah Johnson and Brubaker to his list.
I saw Redford in Barefoot in the Park in 1967 when i was 6 years old at a theatre on the boardwalk at Hampton Beach, NH when we spent the summer there. May have been one of the first movies i saw.
Great call on Jeremiah Johnson. It’s sort of a “western” but it’s a lot more than a typical western.
What it is is a REAL western — what the West was really like (early on) rather than the ususual movie/TV version set in the 1880s or so. It’s educational.
I appreciate it on that level.
The thing that grabbed us about “Butch” was that it came along when people who had grown up on westerns hadn’t seen a new one in years, and it was presented with a definite updated kick — the Burt Bacharach music, etc.
Sixteen years later, my generation got a treat when ““>Silverado” came out. It returned all the western cliches that the young actors in it had grown up on, but done in a very slick package. It had the wagon train attacked by Indians, the drifters, the gambler, the saloon, the rich rancher who ruthlessly ran the county, the quiet folk who just wanted to farm and the very talented gunslinger. All jazzed up, and with such updated characters as black settlers who were missing in the movies of the 50s. No wonder it had such a great cast. I think they were all recruited by someone saying, “You’re going to have fun with this one…”
But I digress…
I agree that Jeremiah Johnson feels like an authentic western. I have a soft spot for films that can pull that off. Not long ago, this video of the most authentic westerns ever filmed popped up on my timeline. Of the ones I’ve seen (about half), Geronimo is my favorite, but that’s mostly because I grew up in that part of the country–my buddy and I would cut school and drive to Tombstone to shoot pool like we were some sort of outlaws. Of course the list also includes Young Guns. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I don’t remember thinking, “Oh, so that’s the way it really was…”. So take the list with a grain of salt.
I love verisimilitude. But I’m a sucker for the traditional Hollywood westerns, if they’re good.
I also love the great space western, “Firefly”…
Brubaker is usually the first Redford movie that comes to mind for me, and probably the one I’ve viewed the most times.
“The Sting” IS a good movie, very entertaining. I know I’m unfair to it. It’s just that it was promoted in a way that told me Hollywood was trying to cash in on the popularity of Butch and Sundance by pairing these two, and seen that way, it disappointed me at the time.
But that’s me being prejudiced. It’s very good, and it also has Robert Shaw as the bad guy, and as usual he does a fine job.
It just doesn’t make my list.
“A River Runs Through It” was awesome, but I disqualified it because Redford was behind the camera and not in front. Unless you count the kid he was passing it on to, Brad Pitt. Pitt, the much-younger blond heartthrob, was obviously playing the Redford role, for which the original was too old. And as you say, they got together and repeated that dynamic in “Spy Game,” with BOTH in front of the camera.
That was the first time I ever saw Pitt. To his credit, while he was playing the role a younger Redford would have played, I think he was probably better at it. The Lost Boy is more his type. Except for Sundance, Redford always played the responsible son, not the wastrel. Even when he was a gangster — Gatsby — he was a stiff who didn’t even enjoy his own huge parties. Of course he was true to the character in the book by being that way, but he was very good at it. It was perfectly distilled in his wooden delivery when he called men “old sport.” It was SO awkward, but the character was obviously trying to be cool…
In the “old sport” competition, DiCaprio tried hard, and often:
But he wasn’t as good at it as Redford. Leo seemed to be having too much of a good time, rather than constantly agonizing over Daisy. And when your Daisy is Carey Mulligan and she’s out of reach across the water, a guy should be agonizing…
Speaking of being the Responsible Son, Redford tested for the role of Benjamin in “The Graduate.” That might sound odd, since we will always think of Dustin Hoffman in the role. But actually, at least superficially, Redford was more the blonde, athletic WASP in the book the movie was drawn from. He was also perfect for what Ben’s parents and their friends saw him as — the glittering Perfect Son, the athlete, the star student.
But Mike Nichols was — wisely — looking for something else, and Redford definitely lacked the “underdog quality” he was seeking. Hoffman had that. He brought the magic that made the film such a masterpiece. He and Redford were both cast by type in “All the President’s Men” — Hoffman as the scruffy streetwise Bernstein, and Redford as the much more Establishment Woodward…
I liked The Candidate and The Way We Were. In both, the last scene is so well done.
I think both make sense. Certainly not my favorite movies of all time but I like Redford’s character in both.
I also greatly like his role in the one Twilight Zone he did.
Are these great R.R. performances? Are are they fine films in which R.R. appeared?
Speaking of Nixon, I was on the air at WUSC-AM when Spiro Agnew resigned.
Well, I don’t remember where I was when Spiro resigned. But I do remember standing in the glass-walled wire room of The Commercial Appeal when the news came across that Nixon had been named an “unindicted co-conspirator.” Which was interesting to me because I’m a word guy, and I’d never run across that term before. In fact, I tend to remember incorrectly that Spiro was also named one of those, possibly because his name is more or less hidden in “co-conspirator…”
I definitely remember the night Nixon resigned, which was also during my brief stint at that paper. That all just looms way larger than any of Spiro’s shenanigans. Even though I kind of mix the two things up sometimes…
What I was doing when Agnew resigned was memorable because of the news interruption of that day.
Instead of playing rock that day (it wasn’t classic rock back then), I was reading the news ripped off the teletype.
I’ll have to check Wikipedia, but I think that it was bribery that brought down Agnew.
Good for you for being a real newsman!