The Abduction
Shortly after Patty Hearst was kidnapped, curious investigators discovered an obscure porno novel called “Black Abductor,” by Harrison James. It had been on the paperback racks of adult bookstores briefly a couple of years before, and then seemed headed for well-deserved oblivion. But it was brought back to life by the Hearst disappearance because certain things in the book and in life were almost eerily alike.
Did Patty’s SLA captors read the book? Was this trashy novel the basis for the most sensational and long winded story of the year? Well, whatever else it may have been, it was a gold mine because if film makers bought rights to a book that had been published before the kidnapping they could come pretty close to making a movie about the Hearst case without worrying about libel.
And that’s what “Abduction” is: A movie that comes pretty close to the facts but leaves us all but totally unsatisfied if any curiosity remains at this point about why Patty joined or seemed to join or didn’t join or didn’t seem to join or whatever happened with her and them also.
Some early scenes are straight out of Patty folklore: She’s necking in her apartment with her boyfriend when they burst in; she’s forced to make tapes denouncing her parents; he tries unsuccessfully to gain confidence with dad; etcetera. Other stuff is played fairly fast and loose. For example, dad isn’t merely a newspaper publisher but also a corrupt slum landlord who takes federal money for “low-income housing” and builds high-rent units instead.
He has some vague sort of unspecified mental hang-up that causes hims tot sit his daughter being raped over and over again on videotape for hours on end. Mom (played by Dorothy Malone) mostly just shakes. The FBI are experts at intimidation; cops are either dumb or unlucky; radical groups’ politics boil down to “violence is the only way to change the system. ”Meanwhile, Patty starts identifying with the SLA because they’re mean to her.
Also, she has a number of sexual fantasies which, as far as I could tell, are based directly on her situation as a kidnap victim; and by the end of the film she’s killed three cops. But no attempt is really made to explain Patty’s conversion. We’ve got to take it on faith, which given the number of sex scenes in which this faith occurred, most of us were willing to do. Maybe if this movie had come out last year or been better or well, who cares now?
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