AllMovie

Every once in awhile, a film that's impeccably crafted and mentally stimulating will undercut itself via "the fourth act" -- in other words, an extra 30 to 40 minutes of movie that exceeds its natural narrative arc. Examples of two such films materialized in the fall of 2008: Clint Eastwood's Changeling and Uli Edel's The Baader Meinhof Complex. In the case of the latter, what would be a near-perfect movie at 110 minutes feels like a chore at 149. The problem with Edel's movie -- not a fatal problem, but an important one -- is that it follows a familiar structure for the type of movie it is, then becomes a marathon once it passes the logical end point of that structure. The Baader Meinhof Complex is a pulsing social history of 1960s-1970s Germany, told as sort of a heist movie, in which the Red Army Faction (RAF) forms, rises up, undergoes crisis, splinters, and is ultimately corralled by German police. The death or jailing of the group's principle members comes at about the point most features are wrapping up. It's perhaps an inevitable psychological reaction, then, to view the interminable legal wranglings by the imprisoned RAF members -- as well as new RAF activities conducted by characters who had never before been introduced -- as a tedious surplus of storytelling. It's a shame this problem is worth devoting so much ink, because everything else about this movie is first-rate -- and even the extra running time is not such a problem if you're mentally prepared for it. The leads (Moritz Bleibtreu and Martina Gedeck) give engrossing performances, and it's an especially accomplished feat for its writer-director, Edel, whose resumé contains such dreadful schlock as the erotic thriller/Madonna vehicle Body of Evidence. Too much good stuff is certainly less of a problem than too little.