Movie · 2008 · Action, Crime, Drama, History, Thriller · 2h 29m · R · German
Curator score: 6.3/10 (63.6K ratings)
Overview
When German police viciously quell a protest against the shah of Iran, popular journalist Ulrike Meinhof rebels against her dishonest marriage, walks away from her children and joins radical anarchist Andreas Baader. Together with Baader's girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, they form the violent Red Faction Army, and together perpetrate a slew of terrorist attacks as a way of disrupting the fabric of what they see as an increasingly fascist state.
Ratings
Curator score: 6.3/10
IMDb: 7.3/10
Letterboxd: 3.62/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
Metacritic: 76
TMDB: 7.0/10
Director
Uli Edel
Production
G.T. Film Production, ARD Degeto, NDR, Dune Films, WDR, BR
Cast
Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek, Nadja Uhl, Stipe Erceg, Niels-Bruno Schmidt, Vinzenz Kiefer, Simon Licht, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, Heino Ferch, Daniel Lommatzsch, Sebastian Blomberg, Jan Josef Liefers, Hannah Herzsprung, Tom Schilling, Hans-Werner Meyer, Katharina Wackernagel, Anna Thalbach, Volker Bruch
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A tense, propulsive political crime drama that turns a volatile chapter of West German history into a brisk, unsettling thriller. It’s strongest as a procedural account of escalation, ideology, and state response rather than as a deep psychological study, but the momentum and period detail make it compelling.
Best for
Viewers interested in political extremism and 1970s European history
Fans of large-scale true-crime dramas with a thriller pace
People who like sober, fact-driven historical reconstructions
Audiences drawn to moral ambiguity and institutional conflict
Skip if
You want a nuanced character study of radicalization
You prefer intimate, emotionally restrained historical dramas
You’re looking for a light or easy watch
You dislike films that prioritize events and momentum over interpretation
Overview
The Baader Meinhof Complex is built like a pressure cooker. It tracks the RAF’s rise with a journalist’s eye for incident and a thriller’s instinct for escalation, moving from protest and outrage into violence, manhunts, and political fallout. The result is less a thesis than a chronicle, and that choice gives it urgency even when it feels deliberately unsentimental.
Worth noting
What stands out most is the film’s confidence in scale: crowded rooms, surveillance, street unrest, and the constant sense of a country being pulled apart. It doesn’t always dig as deeply as it could into motive or ideology, and some viewers will find that limiting, but the forward drive is hard to deny.
Bottom line
If you want a polished, serious-minded historical crime film about how radical politics becomes armed conflict, this delivers. If you want a more searching or psychologically layered portrait of the people involved, it may feel more illustrative than revelatory.
Top Letterboxd reviews
DirkH (4★) · 194 likes
This is a bit of an odd beast.
It is a historical thriller that wants to give an objective representation of the historical occurrences around the Baader Meinhoff complex, yet also cast it in the mold of a stylized and tense thriller. And while it only partially succeeds in the first aspect, it more than succeeds in the latter.
If you're looking for an exploration of the motivations of this group of terrorists, look elsewhere. This film doesn't concern itself… more
Harvey 🎉 🎆 🎉 (4★) · 140 likes
Movies based on real events ranked
Should preface this with quite a lot, first I’ve always been interested in the R.A.F (Red army faction) not Royal Air Force (for my Brits) but know very little about it; but the main reason for me watching this is so I can watch a gay “porno” film that’s based on the Baader Meinhoff gang and directed by someone called: Bruce the Bruce, which is just the best name ever so how can I… more
Anna🍓 (2.5★) · 137 likes
A very compelling opening (after the nudist beach) that unfortunately fizzles out into a sluggish pace which was murder to sit through.
Check out Cameron’s far superior Review. We both watched this for the same class 🫡
Elias (3★) · 137 likes
Moritz Bleibtreu so nervig er soll sein Mund halten
shookone (0.5★) · 93 likes
There's a ghost haunting "The German film". One that appears at least once a year, fires up its PR machine, and briefly shouts "Boohoo". This ghost knows how to push the buttons to hit the national nerve. It doesn't have to worry about the quality of its spewed product – if you wave Hitler, you'll also have the torn admission tickets in your pocket.
German film has always had its problems adequately narrating the turbulent period of the 1970s. THE… more