Rating: 
Summary: inspiring
Review: ack,what a great film! the acting is superb, and the screenplay is great - i found myself looking for a pen to write down tons of the lines that i found especially inspiring. i disagree with the other reviewers - the editing style is just that - stylish, not sloppy. in certain scenes, the camera wobbles a little, but i think that this gives the film an authentic feel to it - i felt like i was actually there, as a part of the riot, and those particular scenes had the feel of primary-source footage. the movie was not only entertaining, but inspiring - where have all our idealistic leaders gone to? the film left me asking if the government had effectively done away with all of them. perhaps this film is just a piece of propaganda. i don't know. but if so, i certainly fell for it! and i now officially LOVE vincent d'onofrio!
Rating: 
Summary: NOSTALGIC '60s FILM LACKS INSIGHT
Review: Having lived through, and having participated as a university graduate student in 1960s Anti-Vietnam war demonstrations (I missed Chicago ... luckily) I can recall the radical clowns portrayed in STEAL THIS MOVIE! Abbie Hoffman and his Yippies mischieviously misbehaved while the U. S. government criminally misbehaved (!). When the Yippies misbehaved people got offended and annoyed. When the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI and the Military-Industrial Complex (we were explicitly warned against by Presdient Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960) misbehaved very large numbers of people got killed. But this film was sentimental and soppy rather than insightful. Yes indeed, Hoffman was one of the '60s' central characters. But the film paints him as a snivelling lunatic. Not made clear is that under the cover of war and using national security as an excuse Richard M. Nixon and J.Edgar Hoover conspired against any American who dared oppose their agendas ... especially the likes of Abbie Hoffman. The film alludes to this ... and as a footnote at the end of this often tedious and poorly directed docudrama, these crimes were ever so softly mentioned. However, the social and political conflicts of the time that tore the United States apart were clearly better portrayed in the film WAR AT HOME (Emilio Estevez, Marttin Sheen, Kathy Bates, and Kimberly Williams ... made ten years earlier). Vincent D'Onofrio did the best he could with the role and script handed him. And Janeane Garofalo was indeed very convincing as Hoffman's wife. Yet there was a too soft edge about what was going on and what it meant. Overall, this movie resembled Harrison Ford's THE FUGITIVE, but without sympathy for the persecuted victim. Yes indeed, Abbe Hoffman had broken the law ... and probably earned some penalty. However, in the words of Col. (ret) Tilford Taylor, a lead prosecutor for the U.S. Army (who in 1946-47 successfully prosecuted Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Trial) published in 1968, he said war crimes were being committed in Vietnam by invading Americans in their undeclared war. Fine. Ironically, the architect of the war, Robert McNamarra recently wrote an apologia telling the over 50,000 names on the Vietnam Memorial, "sorry fellas, it was a mistake." That's as far as we've come in 30 years. The film STEAL THIS MOVIE! is not good art, and it takes us no further towards truthfully understanding what happened. We gain very little insight or enjoyment from watching it.
Rating:
Summary: Does justice to a counter culture hero.
Review: Hollywood has a real hard time making films concerning the late 60's and early 70's. They seem to get the clothes wrong for the era, the hair styles wrong, and the slang is mostly not even addressed. This movie concerning a great American is the exception to the rule. If you watch movies as a film critic you probably will not enjoy this film. If you want to be taken back to your youth then this is the vehicle for you. My wife and I had the pleasure of meeting Abbie many years ago and I can say from my experience he had a certain magnatisim that the film was not able to capture. This is excusable. The point is at least an attempt was made to capture the life and times of a man that devoted his life to opening the eyes of America's youth. Thanks to Abbie and the counter culture, Americans are able to enjoy many freedoms not known to citizens of the past. A nice tribute and a pleasure to watch.
Rating: 
Summary: I liked it
Review: I really liked this movie. I thought the directing and cinematography were very good, and the subject was extremely interesting. I would definitely recommend this film.
Rating:
Summary: Abbie---we need you now more than ever
Review: I received this movie for a birthday present, and having read previous biographies of the late yippie (from his brother Jack..et al) I knew the basic chronology of Abbie's life, but seeing a film (however dramatized) gave it a new dimension which had previously lacked in the most sympathetic books. Watching this film as the Bush administration (who ignored the lessons of Vietnam altogether) declares war on the world reignited the passions of a very burt-out grad student. It may take forever, and the activist themselves may stumble along the way but change is possible. As opposed to the 'time limited' mass media presentation of social change, this transformation is a much slower ongoing process that current generations will not neccessarily be able to see). The only thing I had a problem with was the movie presented abbie as a great understander of all social movements, when previous books admit that he did not originally comprehend the importance of the feminist and GLBT movements. Eventually realizing their importance, and the necessity of understanding sexism, Abbie (like many other lefties of his generation) had entered with his own internalized biases about what was political and what constituted valid social change. Overall, however this was a great movie and I encourage ANYBODY involved in social justice work today to pick up a copy of this release for themselves and fellow activists. The end courtroom scene is especially timeless in it's celebration of revolution/indictment of discrimination and the fundamental nature of the US society.
Rating:
Summary: Sorry, but this is a good movie
Review: I'm sorry, but I really not only liked this movie as a movie, but I think that it's important to see. I find it really difficult to find anything about this time and these people in the bookstores, and I would take what I can get, except--this movie has performances that really make the people seem real and create urgency.
Not a big Abbie Hoffman person, I can't fault Vincent D'onofrio's performance like others have. Maybe he isn't a carbon copy, but he makes me feel like I have learned something about the man, and have felt his humanity. That doesn't NOT matter, right?
And I adore Janeane--she really is the heart and mind of this film. Where Vincent is the physical, id sort of person, she makes it real and educates.
Reallly liked this film, and I want to know more; that's what a movie like this is supposed to do, yes?
By the way, the commentary by the two leads is not only laugh out loud funny, but also educates about the time and, important for those actors out there, crystalized the process of filmmaking. You come away knowing more about the movement, wanting to know even more about the movement, and knowing more about how a movie gets made. The relationship there is so perfect. Besides which, as I said, don't be drinking liquid while listening to the commentary, because you will laugh so hard. Maybe this is why they worked so well together on film.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring, Discouraging, Human
Review: Not a history of the 60's or anything else--a story about an unforgettable person. And the story unfolds showing us a very human Abbie Hoffman. This movie depicts Hoffman's experience of many, many events, each of which deserved a movie of their own. Many Hoffman's confront us through the screen: Hoffman the Fool, Hoffman the Revolutionary, Hoffman the Fugitive, Hoffman the want-to-be father, and Hoffman the Bipolar. We see the story through a series of recollections by Hoffman's friends and family, through the eyes of a journalist. "Is Hoffman paranoid," he wonders as the movie begins--a question that never quite gets answered, even though the United States Government _was_ out to get him. In this biography, we also see an ugly dissection of governmental policies. We see oppression, suppression of dissent, blatant violation of rights, and the resilience of that oppressive system. Although many of the things Hoffman fought for were achieved, we still read of protesters beaten and gassed in Seattle and Los Angeles. The police still assault those who protest for non-mainstream causes. The System has not changed, only the faces of the activists. Although we're not drafting our boys and sending them to die in tropical jungles, we're helping third world governments to defoliate their forests in a "War on Drugs" that regularly claims innocent lives, both at home and abroad. After the farce of the 2000 elections, what would Abbie have done? He'd be there at each Bush appearance, playing the fool, pranking this pretender to the White House! Where is he now that we _really_ need him? Where is his successor? (If you'd like to dialogue about this movie or this review, click on the "about me" link above & drop me an email. Thanks!)
Rating:
Summary: Steal Vincent D'Onofrio
Review: Okay, so he doesn't really look like Abbie Hoffman...If you are one of those nuts who has to have history recreated to a "T" to even slightly enjoy a dramatization of it, then this film is not for you. (Most films aren't for you). Vincent D'Onofrio gives another excellent perfomance and my respect and admiration for him grow with his filmography. He throws his entire self into every role and his efforts in this film should not be dismissed. I think that this is a great movie and D'Onofrio makes it great. He upstages everyone. If you want to learn about the Yippies and Hoffman, read his book "Steal This Book" or read his biography.
See more Vincent D'Onofrio's films. Watch him in Law & Order: Criminal Intent. His is one of the most powerful and intense actors of our time.
Rating: 
Summary: Amateurish beyond belief.
Review: The ineptitude on display here has to be seen to be believed. The life and impact of '60's radical Abbie Hoffman is trashed by this shoddy looking and hilariously mis-cast (Janeane Garofalo?) piece of Indie dreck. D' Onofrio's Hoffman is a lumbering, incoherent baffoon. Rubbish.
Rating:
Summary: Weak script, shameful casting, terrible directing.
Review: This film is a complete disgrace to the memory of Abbie Hoffman and what happened altogether in the Movement in the 1960s and 70s. Made by a crew of sellout technical consultants, it takes the incorrect "nostalgic" view that the 60s were just a "crazy time" in some inexplicable way where everyone was running around for no apparent reason like clowns. Vincent D'Onofrio's performance is sickeningly unrelated to anything Abbie--rather than being the sly, slick poolshark Abbie, quick on his feet, D'Onofrio is a spaced out hippie who's constantly breaking into little evil smiles and saying "uhhh" between words, completely missing the rhythm and the power of Abbie's speech. They couldn't even get his afro right--he looks like Mel Gibson in "Braveheart" on the cover. Jeneane Garofalo, as usual, plays Jeneane Garofalo and nothing more. Basically this film is your typical complete misunderstanding of the 1960s, designed around the idea that we can all look back and laugh about it now etc etc. The reality is that Abbie Hoffman was a slick, streetsmart, fiendishly smart guy and he used it for serious political aims--this film takes the fact that he used humor as a weapon to mean that his point was humor. It makes revolution out to be a joke, when in reality he was very serious, and very good at what he was doing. I only wish Abbie had been around to stop this.
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