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GUERRILLA: THE TAKING OF PATTY HEARST Send This Review to a Friend
The 1970s were years of rebellion of various kinds in reaction to the Vietnam War and assorted injustices. Director Robert Stone has revived memories of the era by focusing on the San Francisco-based Symbionese Liberation Army, which saw revolutionary violence as the answer and its means of organized protest. More specifically, he recalls the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, the newspaper heiress, and how the media hyped the event after she sided with her kidnappers in conversion to their mission. Patty took on her revolutionary role as Tania and participated in a bank robbery in which two persons were shot.
The story, of course is well known, so well known that Stone didn’t even interview Hearst as part of the film. Instead he relies on available clips and footage. His own mission is to understand what motivated key participants in group and to recap the extraordinary events that led to deaths, imprisonment and eventually a presidential pardon for Hearst.
Stone’s primary achievement is getting interviews with Russ Little a founder of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), and with Mike Bortin, another key participant, thereby giving us understanding of the terrorist activities from their reflective viewpoints. The filmmaker also focuses on the brutal counter-reaction by the authorities that led to a massacre.
The documentary unfolds well dramatically as Stone develops a portrait of the movement, its players and the toll taken on their lives and the lives of others. Although it deals with native-born terrorism as a means to an end in a time long past, the film inevitably gives rise to thoughts about other forms of terrorism with which the world is confronted today.
It also reminds us of the events that triggered opposition, no matter how misguided the resort to violence was in lieu of peaceful protest. A Magnolia Pictures release.
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