So I'm thinking about them both at the moment, even though my favorite Redford films are mostly in a different ballpark than Mom's. I've been lucky enough to be in attendance at two New York City events featuring Robert -- a retrospective on his career and a look at one of his last roles, The Old Man and the Gun with Sissy Spacek. I thank Mom heartily for the introduction to one of my favorite actors.
So now I'd like to present my top films of Robert's -- there will be plenty of "these were his best movies" lists going around, these are just the ones I love and watch the most. And this blog is the first thing I've written on Mom's laptop, which feels entirely appropriate.
All the President's Men:
This will obviously be on a lot of best-of Redford lists. Robert made this one happen after buying the rights to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's book on Watergate, and helped transform it into a movie about the investigation that led to Richard Nixon's resignation. This film represents a lot of things for me beyond being my favorite Redford film. It's also my favorite movie about the industry I've chosen to work in for more than four decades. It's a microcosm of life in the '70s. It somehow retains tension throughout, even though you know how it ends. The thing I always think gets lost when it comes to the film is just how good Robert's performance is in the movie. He plays Woodward with an air of naïveté while retaining the journalist's drive and desire to get a story that feels like it's over his and Bernstein's heads at times. There's a scene that hits perfectly in which Woodward is on the phone talking to two different sources and he calls one by the other's name because his head is just spinning. That's the kind of detail that gives the movie gravity and sustains it.
The Hot Rock
It's a precursor to all the Oceans movies that came afterward with four men trying to pull off a diamond robbery that keeps getting thwarted -- a lot of the time thanks to their own mistakes. Redford plays Dortmunder, freshly out of prison and immediately thrown back into a life of crime. He's smart, but he's not infallible, and that goes double for the guys he chooses to associate with -- brother-in-law George Segal, Paul Sand and Ron Liebman. They get the rock out of a high-security museum, sorta, then leave it behind at a police station, fly a helicopter to try and retrieve it and ultimately swipe it from a bank deposit box. None of these attempts are typical measures and it always seems like things just won't roll their way. The words "Afghanistan banana stand" become code for knowing and appreciating the habitual crime.
Downhill Racer
Redford doesn't always play the good guy, it just kind of feels that way. And by "good guy," I don't mean on the up and up, I mean taking on more of a villainous role. As the Sundance Kid, he's certainly not on the side of law and order. Same with The Hot Rock above. There's an interesting dichotomy that comes into play, though, when you really shouldn't like his character because you go into the movie wanting to like Robert Redford. In this film, he portrays cocky David Chappellet, a skiier brought onto the U.S. team when another athlete is injured. The reason he didn't make the squad in the first place is that he's not really a team-first guy. But the squad needs him, and he is good at what he does. Chappellet clashes mightily with his coach (Gene Hackman) and he's not exactly a good boyfriend. It makes for an interesting trip down the hill.
Sneakers
This is kind of a buddy caper movie with Redford in the lead as a security pro in charge of a group of scene stealers (David Strathairn, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier and Dan Aykroyd). Martin Bishop and his fellow hacking experts are blackmailed into stealing a black box for the government ... but is it really for the government? This collection of pros -- with Martin's former flame (Mary McDonnell) in tow -- will surely figure it out. It plays out as sort of the flip side as The Hot Rock, but with a similar sense of humor and more of an expectation that this crew can handle whatever obstacles arise.
Legal Eagles
I call this one a guilty pleasure, but I don't really feel guilty about it. Redford plays district attorney Tom Logan and gets himself into hot water -- something his boss seems to have been waiting for so he can send him packing. But an opposing attorney (Debra Winger) takes a shine to him and his daughter (Jennie Dundas) loves him, so he can't be that bad, right? More proof: When Tom can't sleep, he tap dances while eating ice cream. So when he does something even dumber -- sleeping with a suspect who becomes a client (Daryl Hannah) after he joins forces with Winger's Laura Kelly, we can forgive his trespasses while waiting for him to best another icon who recently passed (Terence Stamp) and hear an actual guilty pleasure, Rod Stewart's hit song, "Love Touch."
The Horse Whisperer
There are a lot of romantic Redford flicks out there. The one I like the most was also directed by him. In my mind, Tom Kelly is the character I most closely associate with Robert. Tom speaks with actions more than he does with words, but when he does voice his opinion, it resonates all the more. Kelly may seem to relate to horses better than he does people, but the latter just needs to be as open to "hearing" what he has to say the way horses do. So when city girl Kristen Scott-Thomas brings severely injured daughter (Scarlett Johansson) and her maimed horse to his ranch for fixin', everyone winds up changing for the better. It takes a lot of time and patience, but even the most broken characters can be healed.
Brubaker
I remember seeing this one with my mother when it came out. And it's not your garden-variety Redford movie, some of the more violent images have remained with me for a lifetime. His Henry Brubaker goes into a prison as an inmate to get the lay of the land, and then it's revealed that he's the new warden. So he knows exactly what needs to get done, but it's definitely not that easy. My affinity for this one gets an added boost because we have a kitten named Brubaker. And he was named that, by me, because our favorite cat rescuer said the orange kitten they had just taken in had eyes that reminded her of Robert Redford. Of course we wound up adopting him.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Newman is super fine in this movie, but Redford makes it for me. But there's really no need to pick between them because the pairing -- as well as the duo's subsequent one in The Sting -- works like gangbusters. The real-life besties (their escalating car prank story is just as hilarious as tricks played in any movie) just work off each other so well that I'd be willing to have them just read the phone book on screen, let alone dive into this well-suited tale of the two outlaw cowboys. In fact, I take back what I said earlier, my favorite love story with Redford is this bromance. I don't need raindrops falling on my or Katharine Ross' or anyone else's head, just set me up with these two long tall ones.
The Old Man and the Gun
Redford went back to the well for one of his final roles as Forrest Tucker, a 70-year-old bank robber and escape artist. It's like watching one of Roberts early ne'er-do-wells rounding the last bend as Forrest tries to awkwardly make amends while still getting his jollies as a career criminal. That alone is interesting enough, but then there's another component that makes the story even more compelling. This charmer unfortunately was his only teaming with Sissy Spacek. Man, they played off each other really well. I wish that collaboration happened a lot sooner and we could have enjoyed more moments of simple perfection with them together.
Quiz Show
For the final choice of this top 10, I'm picking my favorite directorial effort of Redford's. He didn't act in this one because he focused all his energies on the beautifully filmed and lavish spectacle that tells the story of the infamous Twenty-One game-show scandal of the late '50s. Robert does an incredible balancing act between the three leads -- Rob Morrow, who is investigating the fixing of game shows; John Turturro, a contestant who benefited from said fixing but harbored resentment when he was told to take a dive; and Ralph Fiennes, the bright-eyed handsome successor who got swept up while becoming the show's biggest winner. Add to this an incredible performance by Paul Scofield as Fiennes' father, who can't understand the country's fascination with game shows nor his son's fatal mistake.
