United Red Army

Running over three hours, Kôji Wakamatsu's portrait of the extreme militant-left movement in 1970s Japan is a fact-based film that turns history into a riveting psychological thriller. Opening with a survey of the student protests of the 1960s—using documentary images, voiceover, and onscreen text—the film goes on to show how fringe groups broke off and transformed into an ideologically confused, slogan-spouting revolutionary organization calling itself the United Red Army. With fictionalized inserts interspersed here and there, most of the story takes place during the group's self-imposed exile in the mountains, where a training program turns twisted due to the megalomania of its leaders—including Tsuneo Mori (Gô Jibiki)—who exhibit a tyrannical, cult-like sense of domination. Throughout the ordeal, many committed to the cause die through abuse and starvation, and Wakamatsu uses flashbacks to chronicle their early involvement. Eventually, a days-long shootout transpires between the police and the last of the United Red Army members, who hole up in a vacation lodge and vow to fight to the end. Both a powerful drama and a revealing look at a facet of Japanese political history little known to Americans, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)