8/3/2019 Steal This Movie movie review

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Steal This Movie(2000)

Like some in my generation, I retain a fascination for the counter-cultural

movement of the late 60s. In some ways they came so close to real cultural change,and just when that seemed most possible, they pissed it all away on dope and sex.I don’t revere or admire any of the major players – most of them were a little toolibertine for my likes – but I do find some of what they were trying to do compelling,even if they chose paths I don’t particularly care to tread to try and achieve it.

Steal This Movie  takes its name from Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, a hippiesurvival guide, and is Hoffman’s story from the late 60s through the late 70s; it’sset in the late 70s, with the earlier action being told through flashbacks. Hoffmanwas a radical free thinker with a warped sense of humor (he helped create theYippies, a more politically bent arm of the hippies, who among other things tried torun a pig for president in 1968), and he had a keen sense for high-profile absurdity.The movie narrates his struggles against an increasingly paranoid US government,and his efforts to make public some of the private surveillance organs the FBI andeven CIA used against the American people.

I’m no big Hoffman fan – he had some good points, but he was kind of an in-your-face yutz – but having Vincent D’Onofrio play him was a stroke of genius. Not only

is D’Onofrio a talented actor, but he slightly resembles, with appropriate wig andmakeup, Hoffman, and he captures perfectly the man’s northeastern cadence.D’Onofrio is riveting here, just excellent, playing a very flawed man trying to livehis life a very hard way. Janeane Garofalo plays his wife Anita, and while I’m nother biggest fan, she’s very natural here, that seemingly effortless acting that I

really enjoy; she becomes Anita so completely you stop seeing the actor. DonalLogue and Kevin Corrigan get to play some of Abbie’s supporters (Corrigan is JerryRubin), and Kevin Pollack his attorney, Gerry Lefcourt. All of the performances aresharp, on-target, and excellent.

It’s not always a happy story – Abbie is hassled by the Man for his subversiveness,and Abbie himself is no saint (at one point he is living together with his wife, hischild, and his new girlfriend). Some of the problems he experiences you can clearlysee he’s brought on himself – and that’s what really drew me into the movie. Whilethis is an attempt to tell a story sympathetic to Abbie, it in no way glorifies him andshows his faults as well as his strengths.

I found this to be an excellent movie. Not everyone will be interested in the subjectmatter – and forty-five years later, hippies seem kind of stupid and dated – butunderneath all the bad fashions and acid trips, there was something going on, atleast among some of them, and that better part deserves to be explored andexamined (I think). This movie is an excellent and enjoyable way to do so, wellworth a look for the stellar acting alone.

February 3, 2011