Germans have a quality wave of movies that reached wold audience in the early 21st century, after the Run Lola Run hit. This movie is perhaps not the best of the best, but is interesting, original and gives a story of one turbulent era with great detail and precision.

I am German, but usually I dislike German movies. So it was a big surprise for me how great this movie actually was. (After all the disappointing Hollywood movies, I will definitely look out for some more German movies.)

Life sometimes writes the best stories, but that doesn't mean that they are always told well. In this case the movie told the story perfectly. Of course not everything happened exactly as it was told, but the whole movie was very convincing. Psychologically the whole thing was very smart, the talks have been totally impressive and intellectual.

Even the action was great. Probably the best action ever shown in a German movie. Actors also have been on a very high level.

I personally would have liked a bit more information. But yea, the movie is already 2,5 hours long. I understand that they needed to leave out a lot of stuff. The movie did an amazing job of generating a great mix of entertainment, information and realism. - Something very unusual.

The Baader Meinhof Complex succeeds in bringing the social upheavals of the late 60s-early 70's to life for 21st century viewers in a realistic and urgent way.

The Baader Meinhof gang of West Germany was more or less equivalent to the Weather Underground in the USA – primarily students and intellectuals and their hangers-on who became frustrated by the failure of the mass protest movements of the late 60's to overthrow the world order. This frustration led them to engage in acts of terrorism, meant to provoke the state into increasing repression which in turn was supposed to provoke the population at large to mass revolt. (A similar movement existed in 19th century Russia when terrorist bombers, impatient with social quiescence, took to assassinating prominent officials, including Tsar Alexander II.) It didn't work and it only killed or injured a lot of innocent people, alienated millions more and ultimately reinforced the status quo.

This film not only re-stages the street battles, bank robberies and bombings in a manner up to the best Hollywood-action standards, but also reveals the individual, psychological complexities of the central gang members as portrayed by some very fine actors. The gang was a combination of downright sociopaths (personified by Baader) and morally outraged mainstream citizens (personified by Meinhof). It was a vast and messy enterprise, and director Uli Edel wisely allows the sheer chaos of it to explode across the screen in all of its confusion in order to replicate as much as possible the instability and the passion that characterized these events at the time, and to keep the story alive and flowing. In short, he crams as many aspects of the story as he can into two and a half hours, giving the audience an abundance of notions to explore during and after viewing.