Edel's telling of the story of the Red Army Faction, anti-imperialist terrorists in '60s and '70s Germany, crams virtually every recognisable face from voguish recent German historical cinema, and while it avoids the trap of making a postulating egotist like the group's leader Andreas Baader anything other than an obnoxious arschloch despite the risky casting of the usually likeable Moritz Bleibtreu, it does end up creaking under the weight of the sheer number of passengers. The story of the would-be revolutionaries is narrated with a fair degree of punch and even-handedness, but in insisting on grinding out the full historical course of events, ends up rather dramatically directionless, particularly after the premature death of Martina Gedeck's Ulrike Meinhof. After that, we're left with a succession of court cases and increasingly flat acts of petty terror: Edel has simply stuck too closely to Stefan Aust's original book, and forgotten to adapt it to another medium. By no means a disaster, it nevertheless ends up leaving far too little aftertaste for an episode so sour.5/10
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