Here's Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid that he became a movie icon, and he went on to appear in further classics like The Sting, All The President's Men and many more.
He announced his retirement from acting following 2018's Avengers: Endgame - shot before The Old Man And The Gun - ended up being his final screen performance. Redford was quite prolific as a performer in the decade leading up to his retirement, though. One of the best received was 2013's All Is Lost, from director J. C. Chandor. This stripped-back survival drama cast Redford as an unnamed man doing his best to stay afloat when his boat starts to sink.
It may not be up there with the best shipwreck movies - though it's obviously quite different from the likes of The Poseidon Adventure - All Is Lost is a great showcase for Robert Redford as a performer. Redford's character "Our Man" is literally the only person in the movie and has almost no dialogue. All Is Lost follows his character as he tries everything to get out of his situation, from repairing his radio to trying to signal ing container ships, but as the story progresses and his food and water dwindle, his odds get bleaker and bleaker.
All Is Lost's final scenes see Robert Redford's character, who at this point is adrift in his life raft, making one last desperate call for help to a ing ship. He lights a fire to draw attention to himself, but it burns out of control and forces him into the water. The ship es seemingly without anyone noticing and the man, understandably exhausted, slips below the water. As he sinks, he looks up to see a boat near his burning raft, and a searchlight shining down on him.
This gives him a final push to swim for the surface, where he reaches out to an outstretched hand as the movie fades to white. There are two ways to read All Is Lost's final scene; either Our Man was incredibly lucky and he was saved by a boat, or it's a dying vision and the fade to white symbolizes his death. According to interviews with JC Chandor like this chat with Digital Spy, this was the intended response, as viewers either read it one way or another and whichever they choose is the correct reading for them. Optimists like to think Robert Redford's character survived while pessimists read it the other way.
