A semi-fictional account, including most of the names of the players being changed, of the event that resulted in the creation of the term Stockholm Syndrome to describe people who feel empathy and sometimes more for their captor(s) is presented. In 1973, a lone armed man, thought to be American, storms the downtown Stockholm branch of Kreditbanken. Ultimately the authorities, led by Chief of Police Mattsson learn of his at-gunpoint demand: $1 million US, the release of convicted bank robber and murderer Gunnar Sorensson, and a Mustang Boss 302 like the one Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt (1968) as a getaway vehicle for the two of them. By the time Mattsson gets Sorensson to the bank – unknown to the gunman, who is thought to be well known robber Kaj Hansson, Sorenson having made a plea deal with Mattsson for his cooperation against the gunman – there are three hostages at the bank, all the others that were in the bank at the time let go. Arguably the most lucid of the three is bank clerk Bianca Lind, a wife and mother of two preschool aged children. Ultimately she is able to figure out that the gunman is not Hansson as Mattsson suspects, but rather Lars Nystrom, what she knowing of his past crimes chief being his humane treatment of people he held at gunpoint. Beyond what Sorensson decides to do with his ultimate goal not to go back to prison, what happens largely depends on Lind, who begins to trust Nystrom more than either Mattsson or Prime Minister Olof Palme whose actions and decisions she believes from what she can see are more of a potential physical detriment to her and her fellow two hostages than that of Nystrom.—Huggo
The actual event depicted in the film is what gave a name to the psychological phenomenon known as Stockholm Syndrome, where hostages develop a psychological alliance with (sometimes also referred to as sympathy or sympathetic feelings for) their captors as a survival strategy.
