Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst 2004

“Robert Stone’s Guerrilla is a definitive documentary about the self-destructive fringe group of the anti-Vietnam War movement responsible for the astounding 1975 kidnapping of Patty Hearst [teenage newspaper heiress and Berkeley undergrad]. Superbly researched and constructed… [Stone’s film] shows the Symbionese Liberation Army’s human face, but stresses the stain it put on American radicalism... Audiences old enough to recall the SLA saga probably will experience flashback sensations from the massive amount of film, video and audio material retrieved and assembled by Stone and his team. Younger viewers may go slack-jawed from the sheer outrageousness of everything that happens… In a risky but finally brilliant gambit, Stone opted to not interview the kidnapped heiress, thus making the documentary not about her but about the SLA itself… The eventual conversion of Patty to the SLA’s revolutionary cause surely stands as one of the most incredible sociopolitical twists of modern times, and it plays out here like it’s happening for the first time.” — Robert Koehler, Variety