`WEATHER UNDERGROUND' WARMS UP TO '70S RADICALS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

`THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND'' offers a relatively balanced, documentary look at the most notorious political terrorist group of the 1970s. While filmmakers Sam Green and Bill Siegel seem sympathetic to the revolutionary idealism that the left-wing radicals convinced themselves was worth fighting - if not quite killing - for, they also give both critics of the movement and the now aging, more reflective members of the Weathermen ample opportunity to examine how wrong their program went.

A violent offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society, the biggest 1960s organization for white kids who wanted to protest the war in Vietnam, racism at home and the establishment's malfeasance in general, the Weathermen emerged in 1969 with a self-styled declaration of war on the U.S. government. With sexy spokespeople Bernardine Dohrn and Mark Rudd at its head, the Weathermen faction, which took its name from the line ``You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows'' in Bob Dylan's ``Subterranean Homesick Blues,'' was dedicated to bringing the international uprising its members felt was inevitable to America.

It wasn't long, however, before the small, hard core of dedicated Weathermen had to get subterranean themselves. Before they could really put their agenda for violent overthrow into action, three members blew themselves up while trying to make a bomb in a New York brownstone. Although they would be the only deaths directly attributed to the Weathermen's supposed war, the blast galvanized the FBI. But despite intensive efforts to capture them, the Weathermen-in-hiding spent a good deal of the ensuing decade bombing government and corporate targets, always taking care to damage property without harming people. Ironically, well-financed - most came from well-to-do, well-educated backgrounds - the Weathermen even engineered the jailbreak of acid guru Timothy Leary ... for a handsome fee.

And the feds just couldn't catch them. Nonetheless, the revolution never came, obviously, and as Jane Fonda turned from activism to active workouts and the Reagan era approached, living off the grid took its toll. One by one, Weathermen turned themselves in. As can only happen in America, few served time due to all the laws the FBI broke while trying to apprehend them. Many work in academia now; one of the most insightful observers of his own checkered past, Brian Flanagan, runs a New York pub.

It is indeed the Weathermen and other leftists' - including peaceniks and Black Panthers who had nothing but disdain for these privileged kids' plays at armed struggle - tempered backward glances that make the movie more than just a historical look at an outdated fringe. A passage from Rudd's memoir, explaining how they viewed their hate as a badge of moral superiority, explains as much about the terrorist mind-set today as it did back then.

In a different way, ghastly archival footage from Vietnam makes it evident why so many Americans were radicalized against that war. Undoubtedly, some who see ``The Weather Underground'' will find similar connections to the current situation in Iraq. But you can also read from the movie that things haven't gotten nearly as bad as they did back then - yet, anyway. And that kind of draw-your-own-conclusions quality applies to much of this film's informative, uniquely reasonable approach.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND - Three and one half stars

(Not rated: violence, nudity, sex, language)

Directors: Sam Green and Bill Siegel.

Running time: 1 hr. 32 min.

Playing: Landmark's Nuart, West L.A.; Edwards Park Place 10, Irvine.

In a nutshell: You don't have to be an old radical to appreciate this multifaceted look at the '70s domestic terrorist group that blew up a lot of buildings but no people, except some of its own members.