Review of The Baader Meinhof Complex

Living a long way away from Germany this film really is something of a curiosity. I was aware of the baader meinhof terrorist group and one would have thought that there was plenty of material here to make an interesting movie about a time of turmoil in German history. I was in fact living in England 1972-75 and was in Germany at times during this period. The film looked very 1970's and the acting was fine. I think that the problem with the film, and in my view a major one, was the lame script and a series of characters that didn't manage to get through to me in any human way and by the end I really didn't care about them or what happened to them. The second phase of the campaign to free the main characters was not explained in any great depth and just seemed to materialise from nowhere. Not a German classic in my opinion, not even a good film and perhaps at over two hours running time far too long and self indulgent by the director