Perhaps the disappointment is found in the fact that the screenplay isn't written by Schrader - who had previously been involved with two great biopics 'Mishima' & 'Raging Bull.' The fact that it depends on Patricia Hearst's autobiography 'Every Little Thing' is irritating also - surely after the Mishima-biopic you'd think Schrader wouldn't have bought into the official account of things! Watched alongside the recent documentary 'Guerrilla:The Taking of Patty Hearst' this film makes more sense - though the ultimate take on the Patty Hearst life is probably found in Christopher Sorrentino's fictional interpretation 'Trance' (2005)

Perhaps it was the fact that this film was low-budget, while the cinematography is pretty wonderful considered (crying out for someone like Storaro!), the cast is lacking - the only actors who are that great here are Richardson in the title role and Ving Rhames ('Casualties of War','Homicide','Pulp Fiction') as Cinque. With the realease of 'Guerrilla', I have no doubt there will be another cinematic interpretation of the Hearst story - Steven Spielberg's upcoming 'Munich' (2006) is based on the material found in 1999's documentary 'One Day in September' - suggesting that 2012 will see another Hearst film, perhaps one that doesn't buy into Hearst's own account?

Patty Hearst's story remains one that fascinates, like the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Black Panthers and the Weather Undeground there was a certain chic to a band of terrorists (note that Madonna recreated the 'Tania' photo from this story on her risible 'American Life' album!). It seems that the countercultural hippy-guys and chicks of movies like 'Easy Rider', 'Punishment Park', 'Two Lane Blacktop', 'Vanishing Point' & 'Zabriskie Point' had made flesh. & what could turn an American princess, an heiress to Hearst Corporation into a revolutionary-terrorist who held up banks and lacked a sense of humour?

'Patty Hearst' doesn't really get to the truth (if that's possible), or allude like 'Guerrilla' to inconsistencies in the Hearst-story (LSD-induced brainwashing & the Stockholm Syndrome were all touted by the Hearst-camp, but as a journalist in 'Guerrilla' notes, she could have got away at any time once she became 'Tania'!). The subject of terrorism is one that resonates with the recent climate of terror under which we live - much of it a result of U.S. foreign policy incidentally - though I think that documentaries like 'Baader-Meinhof:In Love with Terror', 'Germany in Autumn', 'Guerrilla' and 'One Day in September' are more suited to the subject than dramatic film.

Schrader's film is still worth a look, and is a film relatively overlooked in his ouevre - though far from his best work which must include 'Mishima','Blue Collar','Light Sleeper' and the screenplay to 'Taxi Driver.' Fans of the biopic, or those interested in this history should watch this film - which was a lot better than I remembered it from a viewing sometime in the early 1990s -

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