Patty Hearst is one badass bitch, and I'm not just saying that because she shares a first name with me. It's because Natasha Richardson does an incredible job of seamlessly and believably transitioning her character between naïve heiress, terrified hostage, eager recruit, professional bank robber, and hardened felon. The moment I fell in love with Richardson as Hearst was in her final monologue when she delivers this gem while tossing a cigarette in and out of her mouth: "I finally figured out what my crime was. I lived. Big mistake." It's performances like this that made Richardson a household name, and what made her unexpected death in 2009 such a public tragedy.

For those of us who were mere unfertilized eggs when the film's events happened, here's the basic rundown: Patty Hearst, at the time a 19-year-old newspaper heiress, was kidnapped from her home by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a radical left militant group who saw Hearst as a political pawn to negotiate the release of imprisoned members of the SLA. They brainwashed her away from her bourgeoisie upbringing to their extreme socialist views, to the point that when offered the choice of staying and joining or going home, Hearst chose to join the group. From there she was initiated and coerced into performing a number of politically-motivated crimes, including robbing a bank while identifying herself by first and last name. Eventually she was captured by police and the nation is divided, trying to decide whether or not she deserved to be persecuted for her crimes as a knowing participant or a brainwashed victim trying to survive. This is the central question the film poses: is Patty Hearst a criminal or a survivor?

Paul Schrader does an excellent job, pre-initiation, of using stylized visuals to delineate the bleak conditions of Hearst's kidnapping: being kept in a pitch-black closet, sleeping on the floor, constantly blindfolded and generally devoid of all hope of survival. At one point, Hearst wishes for death, and in that moment, the viewer wants that for her too. Post-initiation is when the other SLA members start becoming more human as they let their guard down for one of their own. You begin to see that it's little more than a misguided group of people who aren't the stoic soldiers for justice they present themselves as. It doesn't matter what your views on capitalism are; robbing a bank, even under the guise of re-appropriation of wealth, is wrong. But the members of the SLA were so deluded by their overbearing leader, Cinque, that by the time they were either killed or arrested, they thought it was for a purpose.

Patty Hearst isn't a feel-good movie, or a movie that has a clean-cut answer or message. It's complex, layered, and illustrates the kidnapping's gray area beautifully.