Patty Hearst

Based on a novel be Patty herself, this film is very suspect on the actual truth, but Director Paul Schrader does a pretty good job at making the film of Hearst's kidnapping by and subsequently joining with the moronic Symbionese Liberation Army compelling throughout the duration of the film. Opting for a seemingly objective approach despite the source material. Nothing new revolving the case will be gleamed for watching this though, and one will take from it the exact same view as what one goes into it with. Personally, I don't or can't sympathize with spoiled rich girl turned violent revolutionary turned praised celebrity Hearst, but I know that there are many that do. Natasha Richardson as Patty gives a serviceable, if nothing special, job. And Ving Rhames gives a good job himself as the cliché spewing leader of the pitifully sad SLA. This movie is also widely known to be the last of Paul Schrader's films to be any good at all, so there's always that.

My Grade: B-

Eye Candy: Natasha Richardson gets topless

I remember just being a kid but I loved history and I was absolutely enamored with this stuff. I've seen this movie a few times and Ving and Natasha (God rest your soul) were brilliant. Ving was overpowering in one of his early roles and Richardson kept her foreign accent in check and was great as Patty Hearst. I'll never forget being a young teen watching the real Patty Hearst on the news and became a pop culture icon hated and loved and doubted and believed , always a mystery to this day. Though this movie is from Patty's perspective, she was found guilty then pardoned or sentence converted. She later became an actress and I always had to watch her not for her acting abilities but just thinking what this women went through and there she is. Regardless of what we think she did go through SOMETHING bad, though we'll never know the truth and she did get out of prison because she was from one of the richest families in the US at the time. This story is so intriguing and like they say u can't make this up. You think you know but we'll NEVER know.

Quite possibly the dullest kidnapping movie since "The Ransom of Red Chief". I mean, it's almost comical. You have a bland, boring WASP abducted by noisome, even more boring revolutionaries. Any humorous or even ironic implications, however, are left grimly unexplored by scenarist Nick Kazan and director Paul Schrader, the stolidity of the later being especially egregious when you consider that this is the guy who was able to look on the pathologies of Bob Crane as well as Dutch Calvinists from Grand Rapids from a somewhat mordant point of view. Give it a generous C, mostly for Natasha Richardson whose good acting is the terxtbook definition of collateral damage.

California is drenched in sunshine. But Patty Hearst, member of one of the most famous and in the public opinion most wealthy families of the USA is brutally thrown into darkness. The California sun is still out there, you can almost feel it, some rays come through, but the light is most of the time shut out by walls or curtains. Once the nineteen-year-old woman reemerges, she is a revolutionary, called Tanya – like Che's lover, you dig?

This highly interesting, very stylish and well crafted movie tells about the ordeal, the disorientation, the reprogramming and the re-reprogramming of a young person who seems to be very much alone while trying to endure these transformations that are forced upon her. Any notion of society seems to dissolve into sheer madness. This retelling of actual facts, which is done exclusively and in straight chronological order from Patty's point of view, might or might not be a „doctored" account of events, it certainly is convincing and allows the viewers to commiserate with the main protagonist. She concludes at the end that society probably would have preferred her dead, and after seeing the movie one must say she has a point there (for this aspect it might be interesting to check out Robert Aldrich's The Grissom Gang).

The group dynamics and the insane pseudo revolutionary gibberish (sounds terribly dated!) has a real feel to it, all actors are believable in their roles. I thought that Ving Rhames was particularly effective as the group's leader, Cinque (and now I know that the name is not pronounced like the Italian word for the number five). Besides Natasha Richardson the performance of Jodi Long also caught my attention. Reminded me a little of Mercedes McCambridge. I hope I will be able to see her in other roles.

I once met Patricia Hearst while I was married to a content editor for Hearst Publications. She struck me as a savvy, confident, and meticulous individual. She appeared to me to be similar to her renowned grandfather. This film has two outstanding performances; Natasha Richardson as Hearst, and Ving Rhames, as the dynamic SLA leader. The other members of the cast were more than adequate for their roles. One must try to put one's self in Ms Hearst's shoes at the time of her abduction. How would you have survived? How would you have defended yourself after being apprehended by the authorities? It was a triumph of the will of Patty Hearst that she survived. And, of course, these events were a tragedy of the highest nature. How would you like to have your daughter kidnapped by a Marxist Revolutionary group? She survived because she was smarter and stronger than any of the people she was abducted by. Her psychic recovery from this ordeal was nothing short of a miracle. To make matters worse, the legal system added insult to injury, but Ms Hearst was able to eventually handle them as well. A film well worth viewing for several reasons.