Plot
A newspaper heiress is kidnapped, brainwashed, and forced to join a group of terrorist bank robbers in this docudrama, based on the saga of Patricia Hearst. In 1974, Hearst (Natasha Richardson), the granddaughter of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, was a student at the University of California. On February 4, members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a radical political group, broke into the Berkeley home she shared with her boyfriend and kidnapped her. Hearst then allegedly spent 57 days locked in a closet as she was indoctrinated into the group's revolutionary beliefs by their charismatic leader, Cinque (Ving Rhames). Eventually, Hearst joined (or at least pretended to join) the SLA, adopted the name Tania and participated in a number of high-profile bank robberies. After several SLA members died in a police fire storm, Hearst and fellow members Bill and Emily Harris (William Forsythe and Frances Fisher) went on the lam and were later arrested. Although she claimed her participation in the group was a ruse carried out to protect herself from further rape, torture, and mind control, Hearst eventually served several years in prison after her 1976 conviction for bank robbery. Based on the novel Every Secret Thing, Hearst's own account of the events, Paul Schrader's film tells the story from the heiress' own viewpoint, with little in the way of conflicting evidence. After President Carter ordered her release from prison in 1979, Hearst went on to act in several films, including Cecil B. Demented, a John Waters spoof whose plot bears some resemblance to her own life story. ~ Brian J. Dillard, RoviReview
Neither a cold-eyed, objective survey of the evidence nor a straightforward, sob sister puff piece, this biopic uses Patty Hearst's own account of her kidnapping and stint in the Symbionese Liberation Army as a springboard for ambiguous and at times curiously inert storytelling. Continuing the stream of fact-based screenplays that would culminate in the Oscar-winning Reversal of Fortune two years later, writer Nicholas Kazan tries to take the audience inside Hearst's world as she's brainwashed in a closet for two months and then inculcated into the SLA's cultish lifestyle. Unfortunately, Hearst's response to these events -- glassy-eyed pretend acquiescence -- isn't exactly easy to portray visually. Natasha Richardson tries hard to explicate the turmoil Hearst suffered, but the character's inner life can't exactly leap off the screen. The strongest scenes are therefore the ones that depict her actual participation in the group, including sexual liaisons with the males; here, the conflict between self-respect and self-preservation proves compelling. Elsewhere, director Paul Schrader does an excellent job exploring the middle-class guilt and leftover '60s rebellion that fuelled the actions of the SLA's lower echelons. At the opposite extreme, Ving Rhames gives an early display of his star-worthy intensity. His compelling performance as Cinque, the group's principled but misguided leader, is the most dynamic piece of acting in the entire film. As a gritty exploration of countercultural excess, Patty Hearst is never less than gripping. But it sheds no more light inside its protagonist's head than the last 25 years of impotent media glare. ~ Brian J. Dillard, RoviCast
- Natasha Richardson - Patricia Hearst
- William Forsythe - Toko
- Ving Rhames - Cinque
- Frances Fisher - Yolanda
- Jodi Long - Wendy Yoshimura
Credit
Harold Thrasher - Art Director, Linda Reisman - Associate Producer, Pamela Rack - Casting, Richard Hornung - Costume Designer, Stephen P. Dunn - First Assistant Director, Paul Schrader - Director, Michael R. Miller - Editor, Michael Rosenblatt - Executive Producer, Thomas Coleman - Executive Producer, Scott Johnson - Composer (Music Score), Jane Musky - Production Designer, Gordon Wolf - Production Designer, Mark Allan - Production Designer, Bojan Bazelli - Cinematographer, Marvin Worth - Producer, Michael Rosenblatt - Producer, Thomas Coleman - Producer, James D. Brubaker - Producer, Jerie Kaelter - Set Designer, Ed White - Sound/Sound Designer, Greg Walker - Stunts, Nicholas Kazan - Screenwriter, Paul Schrader - Screenwriter, Patricia Hearst - Book Author, Alvin Moscow - Book Author| Patty Griffin: Live from the Artists Den (Film), Patty Berg: Fairway to Fame (1954 Film) | |
| Patu! (1983 Film), Patul Conjugal (1993 Film) |
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