source: Patty Hearst

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.

AVERAGE. I found the film average, even though it was produced for TV and on a low budget. The purpose, as everyone knows, was to portray the girl's kidnapping and captivity in the most reliable way possible. And also to present the motives of the crime in the vision of the revolutionary Marxist group SLA. However, I believe that the events could have been better portrayed, especially highlighting the issue of Stockholm Syndrome suffered by the character. But it is a narrative of the facts for those who want to know the girl's story.

PATTY HEARST MGM DVD on Demand Quality Review This DVD is not digitally remastered but taken from the best print available so says the the makers of this DVD. The movie is presented in widescreen which makes it a step up from the VHS and region 2 DVD releases. Picture quality is very good much better then VHS and the region 2 releases, but thats not to say it's perfect. There is some grain and video spotting in parts of the film most notably in the court room scenes. The early part of the movie is very clear. With this part of the movie being mostly in shadow and darkness the picture quality is excellent. You can see the background in these scenes much clearer then in the VHS and region 2 copies of the movie.Over all the picture quality is very good, on a scale for 1 to 10, 1 being VHS tape quality and 10 being digitally remaster DVD quality I would give this release an 8 for picture quality. Sound quality is excellent. The sound is very well balanced with dialog being crisp and clear and the music score is clear without being over powering. There is no unwanted background noise (hiss,hum,or buzzing). I would give this release an 9 for sound quality on a scale from 1 to 10. The only extra is the movie trailer. There is no chapter search screen, you can jump ahead in the movie every 10 minutes by using the |<< >>| buttons on your DVD players remote.

Director Paul Shrader and Natasha Richardson should have been shoe-ins to win on Academy Award night with her hard-hitting performance as Patty Hearst, kidnapped and brainwashed into performing a series of bank robberies. The absurdity of the state's case against Patty is shown when a District Attorney questions her at the trial as to whether she ever remembered to send her parents a birthday card after her kidnapping. Natasha will be missed, passing away at a ripe age when an Oscar-winning part just might have come her way.

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.

The film held your interest throughout. The storyline was true to the events and there was absolutely no "preaching". The movie did not have an agenda and that was good. The ordeal Patty Hearst went through should have been more graphic or more powerful. She ended up coming off as a ditz - a dimwit. The members of the SLA were laughable. Cinque's politically motivated tirades were comical:"Capitalist oppressor pigs of Amerikkka!!!" Funny stuff. William Forsythe, who usually puts forth a convincing performance as the heavy (see "Out for Justice"), seemed to be on comic relief mode. He seemed like a member of "Saturday Night Live" doing a satire of this character. The film was obviously low budget. It should have shown the shootout in detail and the SLA members burning inside their hideout. This was glossed over and just showed televised news coverage of the burning house. The end did show the letdown Patty Hearst received when the media turned on her and law enforcement officials treated her badly. I don't think Natasha Richardson was up to the task. She really didn't convey any emotions other than confusion.

I always found this event an interesting story and followed it in real life as it happened in the 70's. Watching this movie is not a good reflection of what really happened. Patricia Hearst as she is called nowadays is an actress, writer and producer. She is no longer married to Bernard Lee Shaw as he passed away in 2013.

I totally agree with Hal Hinson's review here. His below phrase says it all, perfectly characterizing this movie: "What one hopes for in "Patty Hearst" is a movie that would straighten out the tangles of her life, and make sense of the woman and her story. But making sense has never been Paul Schrader's strength as a director, and not only does he refuse to sort out her tale, but he ties a few stubborn knots of his own." What a pity not to have dug deeper, tried to understand why she acted as she did and what she really believed. A great true story wasted... P.S. Trust the French to nominate this film for an award (Cannes film Festival). I suppose the jury was sorry they weren't there in 1974 so that they too (together with Schrader) can all merrily join the Symbionese Liberation Army! Vive la Revolution!

The movie, at first I thought was a typical late 1980 movie with fewer actors than newer films and a compact plot. But later I did quite a bit of reading on Patty Hearst following through Wikipedia. The first thing I noticed was that the movie had woven the facts together quite well. Yes, there are a few anachronisms as mentioned in an earlier comment, but I could catch just one of them. Things blend into the movie quite well as far as the victim is concerned. When the movie was made they had no way of knowing that 20-Jan-2001, the real Patty Hearst was given a full presidential pardon after analysis of the case which revealed that the defendant's lawyer was in most likelihood drunk on the day of trial. The movie doesn't concentrate on the trial, but more on the experiences making it a treat to watch. It also scares us as to how fragile society might become with just one economic slide causing everyone to queue up at gas stations; that alone can re-start this guerrilla facade that, considering world politics today could turn out really ugly. The casting is impeccable, I just sat down comparing photographs of the real people with the cast; and there was an 80% resemblance. I like that part. I see this movie as a biopic though this term was not commonly employed when the movie was taken. The movie is relevant to recent times to show that no nation is any "less" vulnerable to insurgent work and possible insurgent fracture. Definitely worth the time to watch it, the movie is quite well made. For a fact the real Patty Hearst herself has acted in movies including a recent one, "A Dirty Shame."