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Despite its title, this documentary from Sam Green and Bill Siegel about the violent radical outfit responsible for a series of bombings during the 1970s doesn’t go much below the surface. "The Vietnam War made us crazy," sums up one ex-member, explaining why the group split in 1969 from the Students for a Democratic Society, which boasted some 100,000 members, and set off on a 10-year spree of quixotic "revolutionary" violence that left the powers that be entrenched and vindicated and all opposition scattered and disgraced. The filmmakers don’t push for deeper explanations, and neither do they pry much into the possibility that these would-be revolutionaries were merely playing into the hands of the FBI and the Nixon White House. Interviewed now after years of notoriety, concealment, imprisonment, and obscurity, former leaders Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, and others seem a lot less cocksure now than they did 30 years ago — at least, to judge by the archival shots of them issuing manifestos after setting off (non-lethal) blasts in the Capitol Building and the Pentagon. Rudd, who now teaches math at a community college in New Mexico, seems downright guilt-stricken — not so much over the damage the Weather Underground’s puny blows against the empire inflicted as over its failure to affect the ugly course of history. "We didn’t know what to do," he admits. But if this film is a flawed look at a crucial cultural turning point, it’s still required viewing for anyone wondering what can be done today. (92 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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