The Baader Meinhof Complex/Der Baader Meinhof Komplex

THE PSYCHOLOGY of the Red Army Faction terrorists who wreaked havoc in the 1970s was explored in three contemplative German movies released between 1979 and 1986: Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Third Generation, Margarethe von Trotta's The German Sisters, and Reinhard Hauff's Stammheim.

The latter, named after the prison where the gang's founders were held, was scripted by Stefan Aust, the journalist whose book, The Baader Meinhof Complex, chronicled the history of the terrorists.

Writer-director Uli Edel revisits that source material and takes its title for a compelling new movie made in consultation with Aust and staged on a much more ambitious scale than those earlier films. Costing around €20 million, it's said to be the most expensive German production to date.

Spanning 10 turbulent years, the film introduces Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck) as a left-wing journalist. Ulrike leaves her comfortable home, her unfaithful husband and their two children to form the Red Army Faction with hot-headed left-wing activist Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and his ruthless lover Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek).

A Deep Purple track plays over a succinct montage of newsreel footage that situates the terrorists in the context of the era's international upheaval. It includes the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the election of Richard Nixon, the Vietnam war, the May 1968 riots in Paris, and Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia after the short- lived Prague Spring reforms.

Meinhof's defining moment is effectively illustrated by a lingering shot of an open window when, after helping Baader escape police custody, she has the option of pretending to be an innocent bystander or going on the run with him and Ensslin.

The film follows these anarchists and their acolytes from protest demonstrations and department store burnings to kidnapping, hijacking and cold-blooded killings. It shows their advantage as the element of surprise, because they were willing to strike anywhere and anytime. And it addresses how they became even more dangerous when the leaders were jailed and succeeded by single-minded recruits.

The Baader Meinhof Complexmarks a return home, and to form, for Edel, who made an auspicious debut with Christiane F. (1981), a graphic picture of young junkies in Berlin. He moved to the US where he worked mostly in TV drama after directing the tough Last Exit to Brooklynand a lamentable Madonna vehicle, Body of Evidence.

Edel takes a cold, dispassionate view of the terrorists at the centre of his new film, which is formed as a gripping political thriller. It sets and sustains a vigorous pace for two and a half hours. The many action sequences are brilliantly orchestrated and shot with documentary-style urgency. And the drama is charged with performances of remarkable commitment and intensity.

The casting of Gedeck as Meinhof and Bruno Ganz as the German chief of police has led to the film being bracketed with The Lives of Others(the 1960s-set East Berlin surveillance drama that starred Gedeck) and Downfall(in which Ganz played Adolf Hitler) as a trilogy, however coincidental, that confronts the darkest eras of 20th century Germany.