To do full justice to this fascinating subject, you'd need a director with something like Martin Scorsese's appetite for detail, capacity for spectacle, and willingness to face up to his own ambivalence.
Comment
05/15/09
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2009)
86
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:80
Fresh:69
Rotten:11
Average Rating:7.1/10
Consensus: Intricately researched and impressively authentic slice of modern German History, with a terrific cast, assured direction, and a cracking script.
Australian Theatrical Release:
May 7, 2009 Wide
US Box Office: $296,294
Synopsis: Germany in the 1970s: Murderous bomb attacks, the threat of terrorism and the fear of the enemy inside are rocking the very foundations of the still fragile German democracy. The radicalized... [More]
Starring: Moritz Bleibtreu, Martina Gedeck, Johanna Wokalek, Bruno Ganz
Director: Uli Edel
Reviews for The Baader Meinhof Complex
Top CriticYou want to know more and Eichinger's script isn't even going to try to enlighten you. The action surges on to the next act of destruction, where Edel's uninflected style works much more effectively.
05/15/09
Top CriticBrilliantly made and utterly compelling from beginning to end.
05/08/09
Top CriticI’d have been happy if this 2.5-hour film had been even longer than it is because, despite its immediacy and the skill with which the events are recreated, it only scratches the surface.
05/08/09
Top CriticAt its most arresting when it dwells in the ambiguity that clouds seemingly righteous action.
05/06/09
Top CriticIn trying to cram a great deal into 150 minutes, the filmmakers necessarily jump scenes like puddles, and sometimes the audience gets lost. But I can excuse this flaw; for one thing, the patchwork or montage style provides the time frame
05/01/09
Top CriticThe film highlights the ugliest side of human nature and as a result it is a sobering experience, reinforcing the futility of violence
05/01/09
Top CriticIt's not surprising the film was Germany's 2008 submission for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
11/01/09
A richly detailed, emotionally complex, character-filled examination.
10/31/09
The acting is top drawer and everyone behind the camera is technically proficient with a workmanlike approach. The monumental task of editing by Alexander Berner deserves special mention.
10/30/09
An epic look at a recent blood-soaked episode of post-war Germany.
10/30/09
Merely lets the facts of forty years ago speak for themselves, and one can't deny that its dramatization of them has enormous energy and urgency.
10/16/09
It doggedly refuses easy ways out, and it has the guts, brains and critical eye to plumb the roots of terror and its bloody consequences.
10/16/09
The Baader-Meinhof Complex is not an easy film to watch; its violence is ugly and brutish. And there's a lot of it.
10/01/09
Part thriller, part social history, this tense 2008 drama traces the rise and fall of the Baader-Meinhof gang.
09/25/09
It’d be nice to see an American filmmaker commit a similar reckoning with the Watts riots, the Weather Underground, or the Black Power movement, not simply resort to cant and kitsch but to really interpret those moments.
09/25/09
An exciting, infuriating, combative experience.
09/25/09
Edel uses documentary tropes to realize his overarching narrative, and the end result is an electrifying, morally complex story of the evil that men (and women) do in the name of the greater good.
09/25/09
It does take awhile for the plot to really kick into gear. Yet the discussion of terrorist morality is interesting, and there are some very tense sequences.
09/24/09
The Baader Meinhof Complex arrives as a useful tool, a history lesson in a box, on a moment in time when actual revolution seemed not only possible but in some cases likely, in parts of Western Europe and the United States.
09/23/09
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