Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

TeenzTen An action-packed slog

Phillida Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Walter Sloane Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

swillsqueal Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan"Weather Underground", soon to be a major motion picture....see the film, but read this first.Weatherman said, "We are everywhere." And they were. But, there weren't very many of them. Max, I'd say about 700, if you include active sympathizers. Still, that was a lot of people, mostly kids, who took up the challenge of making a political revolution in order to help stop the Vietnam War and to participate in what the Weather Underground ideologically understood as a world revolution in the late '60s-mid '70s. That was one of the BIG problems with Weatherman. They didn't think too deeply about history or theory. They were the self-described "action faction" of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They weren't going to wait around while a bunch of armchair revolutionaries were intellectually masturbating while black, brown, red and yellow people were being oppressed by white honkeys. No sir-ree, Bob. They were going to stop the Vietnam War by, "bringing the war home" and align themselves with the oppressed peoples of the Third World and people of colour at home in order to meaningfully participate in the anti-imperialist peoples' war. "We chose to become guerillas", they announced as they watched television and saw what they called imperialist soldiers wreaking a "destruction of peoples' culture."Weatherman's goal was to invigorate anti-war struggle at home by trying the dialectically opposite strategy of the non-violent peace movement. "Piece Now!" was their slogan, the rifle their image. Revolutionary violence was their method. In many ways, Weatherman was an outgrowth of the identity politics of violence which grew out of disillusionment with non-violent tactics identified with Martin Luther King, but you wouldn't know this just by watching "Weather Underground". Malcolm X proclaimed that "violence was as American as apple pie" and that black people would achieve their liberation from racism, "by any means necessary." Cities burned. H. Rap Brown cheered urban uprisings by ghetto dwellers from LA to Detroit with his famous, "Burn, Baby Burn!". King's attempt at creating an integrated, non-violent mass movement was slowly being challenged by people like Stokely Carmichael and the ideology which stated that blacks needed their own movement–let other "races" deal with getting their acts together. The old ideas of there being only one race, the human race were outmoded, they said and thus a substantial part of a New Left ideology of "identity politics" was born. The politics of class was not altogether discarded, it was just put in the back seat. The driver's seat was to be occupied by new, more up-to-date, modern ideas. The Revolution was seen as an ultimate coming together of the oppressed peoples of the world, especially people of colour who would surround the urban centres of the First World, and as Mao's People's Liberation Army had done in 1949, come crashing through the gates of the cities from the countryside, seething with Third World revolutionary struggles. But what were the people *without* colour to do? What would be their role? Weatherman thought they saw the prevailing wind. They needed no more understanding, no weatherman to know which way the wind blows. The Black Panthers were correct about the political situation in the USA, they thought. They agreed that the "honkey" proletariat was bought off. The working class was too conservative and comfortable within its "white skin privilege".Weatherman felt guilty about the oppressive nature of their "race". The real revolutionaries would come from the lumpen-proletariat, people who didn't have jobs and who were "outlaws in the eyes of America": dope smoking students and hippies. To Weatherman this meant white youth. Weatherman was composed of white youth. "They dressed like students. They dressed like hippies", to borrow an image from an old Talking Heads song describing underground life. According to Weatherman ideology, "every long hair is a Yippie." "America's youth is behind enemy lines," they proclaimed. It was their job as "communist cadre" to "lead white kids." "Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks," they announced. They vowed to fight alongside and support black, brown, yellow and red people. "Never again will they fight alone," they wrote in their communiques. This anarcho-Maoist-Fidelista potpourri is only hinted at in "Weather Underground". The best the film producers can do in terms of critical understanding of the group is to trot Todd Gitlin on camera. The former SDSer turned social-democratic academic, manages to whine about how the Weatherman faction of SDS "stole" the organization's name and occupied its National Office.Weatherman WAS audacious. "Dare to struggle; dare to win" was their favourite Maoist aphorism and they literally LIVED that slogan. Their members were like people portrayed in "Fight Club", alienated about the flatness of sterile comfort and determined to punch a hole in the soft, killing machine which surrounded them. Even if their theory was half-baked, one had to admit, you had to have guts to declare war on the "pigs" and on America herself. And after their penultimate violent demonstration, "The Days of Rage", October 8-11, 1969 failed to draw more than around 150 to 200 white kids to Chicago to show how dirty, dangerous and violent they could be at smashing windows and physically fighting the cops/ "pigs", the group decided to go underground, write America off and act as guerillas, fighting behind those enemy lines, "bringing the war home", "shooting to live" in solidarity with the black, brown, red and yellow peoples of the world who would come eventually, in a kind of whirlwind of revolutionary, racial vengeance.

noizyme The Weather Underground was an interesting storytelling of the protest group the Weather Underground. They played an interesting role during a heated time in America from 1970-1980, raising awareness and raising tension throughout the nation as they were growing in notoriety for setting off bombs (literally) in public government buildings every time the US took part in any atrocity. Their message was "Bring the war home" referring to the Vietnam war, which is documented in having a huge death toll by the hands of the US soldiers overseas. If people didn't do anything about the war, they would show Americans what war was by creating war here in the States.This DVD is packed with excellent footage that I've never seen. It offers a viewpoint from the director of what exactly this group of around 30 individuals were thinking about when they decided to take on the US government and its grounds for staying in Vietnam and other actions which the gov't helped in doing. There are plenty of extras on the DVD, including a great commentary by two of the more outspoken members of the Weather Underground, who shed light on their views of other members and their words (which happen to clash with what might've been true). There is full videos of footage from their meetings and a commentary from the director.I can't say if everything that was on the DVD was true for the time, even when everything seems to be in order historically and fact-worthy. As I watched this documentary, though, I got a deeper sense of a mission gone a-wry and a real-to-life feel of drama and a meaning to life beyond capitalism and sitting at home while people die for this country and don't speak up against the Vietnam war (which happens to resemble the most recent 2003 Iraq war best). The DVD might be sending messages out about protesting wars and government actions and how essential it was to this group, and in a way, it makes the viewer feel a slight empowerment to set things right today during our Iraq war, but most of us would probably end up like the group before the Weather Underground (the SDS: students for a democratic society) whom the Undergrounds were a part of, but split because of their blatant inactivity against the gov't when the call came.I loved the film for what it was as a film. I gave the rating for this one a 7 out of 10 stars. There were times when you didn't want to side with the WU. They turned into misguided individuals which can distort their own views to take on any cause of help that the US gave other countries, which cannot be held completely responsible on the US' part. The director had a weird way of showing the transition from their peace-loving group to this more active, bombing group (a typical shot of the ocean on the beach for about a minute or so), but other than that, I got a real education of what they were doing, what the Black Panthers felt about them, and their sense of realism and understanding in the growing world at the crazy time of the late 60's and early 70's. Also included were awesome ambient and funk cuts from the likes of Aphex Twin and Sly and the Family Stone. I loved it, check it out.

sjmcollins-1 Nicely made documentary about some self-proclaimed "revolutionaries" from the 60's & 70's who, after discovering that breaking windows alone wouldn't overthrow the U.S. government, decide to up the ante by bombing any government building they feel is connected to atrocities committed worldwide. Some nicely balanced insight from directors Sam Green & Bill Siegel, as we see some members of the movement who still believe in what they were fighting for and would do it all again, and others who can barely bring themselves to discuss their part due to their embarrassment. I enjoyed the fact that other voices were heard, and it was acknowledged that these people were very close to engaging in terrorism, rather than just "Vietnam and Nixon made us do it--". Some (possibly) unintentionally funny bits in here as well, as we see nerdy-looking 60's college kids talking about engaging in violence, when they look far more ready to engage in an orgy; and constant talk from former Underground members about how tight they were with the Black Panthers, and not one comment from any Panther member to reciprocate, save one who basically calls them out for being kind of silly.

jc_aston Little has been written in the popular media about the Weathermen. My only knowledge came from a dictionary of hip neologisms and a well-known pocket-sized journal which conflated them with the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the killing by one of it's ex-members 10 years later, after he had joined a completely different group. A nice try to produce the mental impression 'tainted, don't believe in', but this film reverses it by trusting you with the details. It contains great archive footage. Crucially, it contains no noodling left-wing speeches, but shows people who were completely unimpressed with the Weathermen, and one member who seems to have rejected the methods they used. Despite these differences, all are given an equal chance to explain their motivations, and that makes it a really fascinating documentary. Steal this film.