Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2005)

The kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974 is one of those stories of which, it seems, no one will ever get to the bottom. This documentary doesn't get to the bottom of it either, at least in terms of answering the question of whether Hearst was brainwashed or committed crimes with the SLA of her own free will. It does, however, do a good job of going through the basics of this strange saga and detailing the motivations of the SLA, which are sometimes overlooked in favor of the human-interest story of a rich heiress getting abducted by radicals. Hearst herself (to little surprise) was not interviewed for this project, but the filmmakers did speak with several important figures involved with the case, most notably SLA members Russ Little (who was imprisoned at the time Hearst was kidnapped) and Mike Bortin. Some important aspects that emerge are the SLA's noble goals -- they were founded, in part, as a result of some radicals' interactions with incarcerated African-Americans -- even if almost anyone would agree the violence they undertook to further their cause was inexcusable (and very foolishly planned). There's also a good mixture of decades-after-the-fact talking-head interviews with vintage footage of news coverage of the kidnapping, the crimes they committed, and the police's hunt (and sometimes killing) of the perpetrators. Some of the directorial devices border on the annoyingly artsy: the insertions of footage from an old movie about Robin Hood in particular are unnecessarily blatant and jarring. Yet some of the scenes are downright chilling, particularly the juxtaposition of Bortin's claims (in his interview) to not even care about who committed a certain SLA-instigated murder with slightly later footage of him being sentenced to prison for his role in that exact same shooting. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Movie Guide