Released in the same year as his clunky but multiple Oscar-winning directorial debut Ordinary People, Brubaker showed a tougher side to Redford than anyone had seen before. As a prison warden who goes undercover as an inmate to clean up the penal system, he had to raise his game among some hardened character actors. “The movies I liked making dealt with an America that was a little different from the America that was propagandised,” he said. “There’s a grey zone that I know, and I want to tell stories about that complex part of America.”
None of Redford’s early TV appearances were as haunting as his personification of death in this creepy-sad episode of The Twilight Zone. “You see?” he says, glowing handsomely and gesturing to an old woman’s dormant body as he leads her spirit into the afterlife. “No shock. No engulfment. No tearing asunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is like a whisper. What you thought was the end is the beginning.”
Before DiCaprio there was Redford: he may never have exuded the pure electricity of the junior actor, and his chemistry with Mia Farrow (as Daisy) was meagre, to say the least, but his permanently distracted air was just right for Jay Gatsby. In the midst of even the most vibrant shindig, he seems uniquely alone. Fame does that to you.
This underrated techno caper-comedy, about a crack team of computer security experts, was led by Redford and features River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier and Dan Aykroyd. Redford’s occasional returns to light comedy could be spotty – Legal Eagles should be outlawed – but he’s having a blast here as the slightly bumbling former radical who has become something of a sellout.
Redford’s most frequent collaborator was the director Sydney Pollack, with whom he made six films including the 1972 western Jeremiah Johnson and the Oscar-bait drama Out of Africa (1985). Their best, though, was this jittery conspiracy thriller in which Redford, working for a clandestine CIA group, has to be brought in from the cold after his team is massacred. Cherish the justified sense of Watergate-era dread, as well as the opening shot of Redford cycling through traffic in a goofy woolly hat and trainers.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
