United Red Army

Comes up entirely lacking in its dramatic and cinematic prowess - and especially so when compared with material this director was creating during these turbulent times.

Mostly well-done in-depth presentation of a Japanese variant on a collective pathology which was found in the early 1970s in Japan, Italy, Germany, the United States, and elsewhere. By taking its time, the film is able to try and grasp the complexity and subtlety of the factors producing the situation it depicts, although occasionally the writing and acting are not quite up to the task. Nevertheless, fascinating subject matter. Should be compared with similar movies from elsewhere.

Well, if the intent was to make these people look crazy... good job! Not too illuminating for 3+ hours though.

"Kôji Wakamatsu's achievement is to show us how that violence can turn as easily inward as it does out." - Andrew Schenker

A film that starts with a flurry of documentary footage begins, over the first hour, to weave in more and more fictional recreations of events surrounding violent leftist movements of Japan in the 1960s and 70s. Focusing in on a couple of groups that eventually unite to create the URA, the film traces the psychological move from engaged revolutionaries to insulated cultists. The tension between outward fervor and underlying cowardice is especially compelling.