Robert Budreau
Stockholm is successful in doing the impossible – making the viewer understand and even empathize with the interpersonal connection between a hostage and her captor, and vice versa.
Stockholm is based on the absurd but true 1973 bank heist and hostage crisis in Sweden as the origins of the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.
A natural poster child for the 1950’s cool jazz movement, the young version of Chet Baker was all chiseled jaw, coiffed hair, and lounging trumpet. The image has long drawn comparisons to James Dean, and perhaps if Baker had died young he would also be remembered as a piece of nostalgic Americana. But Baker lived to the age of 58, battling drug addiction and enduring the familiar career rhythms of a special talent who just couldn’t hold it together.