The trailer for this film made it look like a fast-paced, truth-based action film. Terrorists setting off bombs, riots happening, it made itself appear to be entertaining and exciting - nothing could be further from the truth of what this truly excreable film delivers.
It is a chronicle of a group of ultra-left wing terrorists in late 60s/early 70s West Germany and how these Communists set upon bombing buildings and killing people who stood for what they disagreed with or represented what they hated. The huge problem this film has is that for the first half of it the terrorists are shown in as glowing a light as possible, which makes the second half of the film intellectually redundant because whereas in films like In the Name of the Father the treatment of prisoners had poignancy because we knew them to be innocent, these murderers have nothing to make you sympathise for them.
This is because the charactersiation, despite being based on real people, is completely skated over and two-dimensional. Meinhof's transformation from left-wing journalist to full blown terrorist is wrapped up faster than the average end of an episode of Scooby Doo and while Baader is portrayed (shallowly) as the complete nut of the group it is Meinhof who came up with their "worst" operation? It's incredibly sloppy, messy stuff from writer-producer Bernd Eichinger and with the jam-packed violence and nudity it's extremely exploitative too (but then this *was* made by the guy who directed Body of Evidence).
The cast is either wasted or sub-par, Martina Gedeck and Bruno Ganz are asked to do nothing and the burden falls on Johanna Wokalek and Moritz Bleibtreu who underwhelm consistently. Nadja Uhl tries her best but comes on the scene by the point when the film has devolved into absolute tedium and intellectual annoyance, so she is caught up in the film's problems to distract you from her work rather than luckily having a glorified cameo like Alexandra Maria Lara.
This is a thoroughly perplexing film, it shows these people in as sexy a light as possible, but then the director himself says later on you see that their philosophy is eroded away and making the argument of "we're not as bad as the later generations" is ridiculous because these people were murderers and were muderers at the beginning of the film no matter how much excessive nudity and cool music you shove in there. This is a shoddy effort, which I would find impossible to recommend to anyone as it is intellectually repugnant and has neither the acting or story or drama to create anything of interest. Avoid at all costs, this, though Germany's submission for the oscars this year, is a complete dud.