It was directed by Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler, and Mary Lampson, later subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an attempt to confiscate the film footage in order to gain information that would help them arrest the Weathermen.
The filmmakers use the material from their interactions with the Weathermen Bill Ayers, Kathy Boudin, Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Jones and Cathy Wilkerson to structure its exploration of the formation and direction of the group.
In the end this film provides an unprecedented look at how a bunch of middle-class Americans became self-styled militant revolutionaries, raising questions not only about the merits of their struggle, but also about past and future radical actions.
Emile de Antonio attributes his decision to make this film to his own Marxist beliefs, his fascination with the political climate of the '60s and '70s, and his specific interest in the Weather Underground after reading their manifesto Prairie Fire (Rosenthal, 1978).
He made contact with the group, and after gaining their consent to take part in the project enlisted Mary Lampson (with whom he had worked in the past), and Haskell Wexler (an established cinematographer with leftist sympathies).
[5][6][7] While the legal matters surrounding the production of Underground gained it extensive media coverage, it received mixed reviews from critics, with most damning the Weathermen on the basis of their tactics, rather than addressing the style or merits of the film itself.
Others criticized the film for being boring and relying too heavily on narrative by the Weathermen to hold it together, yet others praised it for its striking juxtapositions and its role as a history of the situation and motivations of the radical left.