The story of one of the most infamous books ever written, 'The Anarchist Cookbook,' and the role it's played in the life of its author, now 65, who wrote it at 19 in the midst of the counterculture upheaval of the late '60s and early '70s.
American Anarchist makes the interesting choice of saving Powell's difficult childhood for the end, and while it was tragic, most people with difficult childhoods didn't go on to write books about how to make bombs.
Siskel turns many interviews into interrogations, browbeating his subject, demanding dramatic apologies, eager to expose a hypocrisy that Powell doesn't seem to have in him.
What starts as an interesting look at a man who singularly inspired a lot of violent perpetrators becomes an unnecessarily hectoring judgment of someone who's already been punished for his youthful bravado.
[Powell] comes off as a tragic figure: a teacher haunted by his most spectacular lesson, and a man of learning who, where his own guilt was concerned, took care not to learn too much.
