We take a look back at the essential movies from the late, great Robert Redford…
A Hollywood legend has left us, and few have had the kind of wide-ranging and incredible career of Robert Redford. The easy smile, poster boy looks and effortless charisma made Redford an A-list star, but his creative talents and methodical nature also made him an excellent director too.
Redford made light work of jumping between being rogueish antiheroes, to unassuming heroes caught in the crosshairs, to the romantic leading man. He was nothing if not adaptable, able to beautifully shift in his maturing years to life in the old dog heroes and mentors to younger characters, becoming his eventual successor.
On top of that, from his early TV breakouts in 1960, right up until his last major role (as impressively commanding and charismatic as ever) in Avengers: Endgame, he stayed busy. For the Gen Z audiences who haven’t dipped back to some of his essential cinema, he’ll at least have made an impression from getting himself in the MCU, as well as the perpetual usage of his infamous meme picture.
However, it would be a shame if newer audiences didn’t discover Redford’s finest works, or older fans missed out on some they may have passed by. Here are ten essential Robert Redford films…
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
As a cinematic duo, Redford and Paul Newman just had the juice. They worked superbly together, creating a rare kind of chemistry that lit up the screen. Redford had impressed in his first run of major feature roles. He was the total package and was given the platform to shine by directors like Sydney Pollack and Arthur Penn. The Neil Simon-scripted (Gene Saks directed), Barefoot in the Park, opposite Jane Fonda was a big break, leading to this perfect unison with Newman.
Newman was the established movie star being paired with an actor seen as a prospective successor. Quiet charisma, charm, chiselled looks, they had a lot of similarities in style but enough idiosyncrasies for Redford not to step on Newman’s toes (either in a team up or on their separate ways).
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was the last great American western of the 60s, set during a real transitional period in America, right at the end of the 19th century. The charming outlaws lead a botched train robbery that leaves them having to evade a posse. The dynamic between Newman and Redford is superb, the movie still holds up beautifully and absolutely rockets by like a steam train at full pelt.
Jeremiah Johnson
Somewhat sadly forgotten, this epic adventure never gets talked up. One reason may well be that it came right in the middle of New Hollywood’s incredible run between 68 and 78, which also happened to house more iconic Redford films.
However, Sydney Pollock’s film (he’s a director that should be held in higher regard than he is) has much to admire. For Redford, it was a major step that had him as the main man, numero uno, up on centre stage. He couldn’t share the load with a Fonda, a Newman, but that didn’t stop him from delivering a performance brimming with star power and magnetism as a reclusive mountain man who runs afoul of a tribe in Colorado. It’s another great tail end of the old-west tale that really builds up the thrills as Redford strives to survive. It’s a great movie with stunning photography, and yes, this is where ‘that’ meme came from.
The Sting
Back in this period of Hollywood cinema, there used to be these things. They were called excellent screenplays. It’s a rarity these days, and after an indifferent 50s and 60s, many Hollywood critics felt those halcyonic days of films like Casablanca were a thing of the past even then. Still, the New Hollywood creative boom saw a return of great scripts.
Ironically, The Sting was placed within that era of exciting creative expression, but was a distinctly nostalgic throwback to great capers of previous decades. Redford teamed once again with Paul Newman as a pair of grifters looking to con a conman in an elaborate scheme.
It’s a great film with a killer script filled with memorable lines that build up the planning, delivery and payoff of the titular string beautifully. Redford and Newman give the film so much sincerity to ground the characters, whilst retaining the kind of charisma that could power a city for a year. There’s also Robert Shaw in dazzling scene-stealing mode. For Redford, his Oscar nomination here as Best Actor would remarkably (criminally) be the only time the Academy nominated him for acting.
Three Days of the Condor
Redford teamed up with Pollack again for their tag team with the longest legacy. Three Days of the Condor is a gripping and paranoia-filled conspiracy thriller standing among some of the absolute greats being fired out in this period.
Redford is a CIA researcher who escapes after some of his colleagues are killed. He must evade his pursuers and uncover the truth, unable to know exactly who he can trust. Like many thrillers of the early 70s, this one is effectively bleak, never letting you feel optimistic about a positive outcome, but keeping you enthralled throughout. Though Redford could play charming and charismatic adventure heroes, here he proved equally adept as an everyman caught up in a situation way above his pay grade in a matter of life or death.
All the President’s Men
This one makes a great double with Condor. A film about two reporters digging ever deeper into the Watergate scandal and putting themselves in increasing danger with it. It’s a remarkable film, absolutely thundering with gumption. Redford and Dustin Hoffman are perpetually active as they work against the clock to break the story of the decade.
We’ve seen many dramatisations of true-life conspiracies over the years, many of which owe their approach and dynamic to Alan J. Pakula’s gripping film. It’s not about huge set pieces or cartoony depictions of Bond-esque assassins to evade. It feels kinetic, immediate, with quiet threat as the intrepid reporters open up Pandora’s box. Both Hoffman and Redford are superb, as is Jason Robards, who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
The Natural
Let’s throw in an inspirational underdog sports film because I’m a sucker for them. If ever a film rested on the natural screen presence and magnetism of its star to carry it through, it’s this. The Natural sees Redford as a middle-aged nobody who comes from nowhere to become a major baseball star in the 1930s.
Barry Levinson’s film is charming, light-hearted fun, full of hope and heart. It looks incredible too, with the 30s setting a key component of the film’s charm. Like the very best inspirational sports dramas, you don’t need to be a fan of said sport, as the underdog hero story is what keeps you watching. That said, the baseball sequences set the pulse racing.
Sneakers
An ageing security expert finds himself in hot water and brings together some old friends and new cohorts to try and retrieve a top-secret black box. Redford returns to the caper, aided by a brilliant cast including Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd and David Strathairn.
Sneakers isn’t perfect by any means, meandering a little across a run time that’s excessive, but it came during an era when Redford’s appeal as a leading man was a little under threat from rising stars like Tom Cruise.
Coming back well into middle age to headline such an eclectic cast and delivering his patented charm, Redford shone once more. When the film buzzes, it really is a lot of fun and might be considered more essential among 90s espionage thrillers, had it been more tightly edited.
Ordinary People
Stepping back to 1980 for a second, with a film that doesn’t even star Robert Redford. However, Ordinary People is an essential film in his CV. Redford’s directorial debut. With well over a decade of feature acting experience under his belt and many a role under Sydney Pollack (also an actor/director), he took more than a few notes from Pollack.
Actors have often made the transition to directing with a degree of skill, bringing with them an inherent understanding of what approach is best taken in extracting the best performance from their cast. They know better than anyone what will work and what doesn’t, and then they can leave the visual craft to a highfalutin cinematographer.
Redford came out of the blocks impressively with Ordinary People, in this intimate, nuanced and heart-wrenching drama centred on a family tragedy. Armed with a brilliant cast, headlined by Donald Sutherland, Redford’s drama deservedly won four Oscars and was nominated for a further two. Redford won best director. Not a bad way to start as a director. Among his finest directorial follow-ups, he made The River Runs Through It and Quiz Show (which pushes Ordinary People close, as his best work behind the camera).
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Look, this one’s for the kids. I’m not a Marvel fan by any stretch, however, as a bridge back to look at Redford, this is a recent example that can be an amuse-bouche for the youngens who may want to go back retrospectively. In fairness, too, this is probably the best MCU film, pound for pound.
Redford plays the kind of shady higher roller that back in his pomp he might have been investigating or stinging. It’s a great role to effortlessly steal the limelight from the younger stars, and at the time, a great reminder of Redford’s powers.
Redford aside, Chris Evans was an excellent Cap, and the fledgling dynamic (and drama) with the Winter Soldier was best utilised here. There are some decent set pieces, leaning far more on practical stunts than many of the future (and indeed past) films did.
The Old Man and the Gun
A year before Winter Soldier, Redford had seemingly signed off as a leading man with the enthralling survival drama All is Lost, a film that was captivating and rested entirely on his capable shoulders.
Five years after that, he came back though with David Lowery’s The Old Man and the Gun. Redford, old but still carrying a twinkle and screen presence to burn, was perfectly cast as an ageing convict who escapes jail and goes on a string of heists. It’s a perfectly lithe 90 minutes of watching a master still able to do what he did better than most. In theory, Redford is playing someone we shouldn’t glorify or find charming, but dagnabbit, this is the Sundance Kid here, going from heist to heist as if he never left the old west. All that was missing was Paul Newman.
Honourable Mentions: Brubaker, The Great Gatsby, Out of Africa, Indecent Proposal, A Bridge Too Far, The Chase, Spy Game, An Unfinished Life, Lions For Lambs.
What’s your favourite Robert Redford film? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Tom Jolliffe
