While this is a powerfully made movie, I felt the filmmakers' sympathies were a bit too much with the Red Army Faction terrorists, whose wanton slaughter of people is typically justified with the claim that "This is the only way to get things done". No doubt the September 11 folks felt the same way. Plus there was an anti-American tone here, despite the inclusion of classic 60's era selections by Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan included on the soundtrack. And 21/2 hours is a long time to sit through this sort of downbeat movie. But those who really get off on politically themed material will probably love it.

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This is a beautifully shot film about a complicated and dismaying subject. In the late 1960's a group of disaffected German youth, protesting Western imperialism and the predations of rampant capitalism, form themselves around firebrand Andreas Baader, Baader's comrade/girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin, and radicalized journalist Ulrike Meinhof to create an urban guerrilla unit specializing throughout the 1970's in bank robberies, bombings, arsons, and assassinations. Director Uli Edel may be too conscientious here, cramming in too much exposition, too many characters. Ultimately, the characters we come to know best are the two who share the film’s title. Moritz Bleibtreu as Baader is driven, hot-tempered, and shrill, an out-of-control ranter. Baader’s howling nihilism is offset by the less emotional intellectualism of his older partner. The excellent Martina Gedeck presents Meinhof as a more complex character, a serious and respected journalist who moves from coolly sympathetic analysis to active participation. Gedeck is good at showing this transition and projecting Meinhof’s ambivalence as she renounces the trappings of her bourgeois existence (including two young daughters). In a sense Meinhof’s counterpart in the Establishment is the investigator Horst Herold (a grave Bruno Ganz). He knows what must be done and he sets about doing it. But he also understands the idealism and discontent that fuel this conflagration. This might have been a better film, certainly a different film, had Edel focused on these characters and perhaps a couple of others (such as the explosive Ensslin, deftly embodied by Johanna Wokalek) and reduced the number of explosions and minor players. But one can’t fault his direction of action sequences. The sequence early on where a clash between supporters of the Shah of Iran and protesting students turns into a police rampage is really an excellent piece staging and editing.

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