United Red Army (2011)
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Reviews Counted: 10
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 5
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 2,134
My Rating
Movie Info
Shot in a raw verite style, United Red Army explores the political unrest of 1960s Japan, when mass student uprisings coincided with the beginnings of the far-left United Red Army group, which tortured and murdered its "deviant" members during a 1972 training session. Mr. Wakamatsu's harrowing film depicts the famed Asama-Sanso incident, which began when members of the United Red Army assassinated 14 of its own, during a group "self-criticism" session, and then broke into a holiday lodge below
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Cast
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Akie Namiki
Hiroko Nagata -
Arata
Hiroshi Sakaguchi -
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Maki Sakai
Mieko Toyama -
Anri Ban
Fusako Shigenobu -
Go Jibiki
Tsuneo Mori -
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All Critics (12) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (9) | Rotten (1) | DVD (1)
If you're keeping tabs on the recent cinematic reconsideration of 1960s and '70s left-wing terrorism, Wakamatsu's devastating chronicle of the ultra-violent fringe of Japanese student radicalism is a must-see.
Top CriticRunning more than three hours, "United Red Army" is a raw mix of documentary and fiction...
The stilted and awkward physical and vocal performances in combination with the visually flat cinematography bring to mind the look, sound and visual texture of American daytime soaps, an association that perversely makes the movie more and more watchable.
The film's commitment to representing the harsh truths of an unfortunate historical moment is admirable, but it tends to grate rather than illuminate.
Grueling [but] engrossing.
...historical drama as psychological thriller.
Kôji Wakamatsu's messy, punishing 2008 meta-docudrama about the cult-like sect of 1970s Japanese revolutionaries gets a long-overdue release.
Kôji Wakamatsu's achievement is to show us how that violence can turn as easily inward as it does out.
Wakamatsu puts this history across with the uncompromising insistence of a nailed-up manifesto.
Compelling tale of ultraleftism becoming nihilistic in Japan.
Audience Reviews for United Red Army
Super Reviewer
The focus is on the protests in Japan against treaties with the United States that threaten to turn the country into one big aircraft carrier. As the police presence hardens, the protesters become increasingly more confrontational and militant, eventually imagining themselves an army, seeking guns by the end of 1972.
The second part has all the ingredients of a horror movie including an isolated cabin in the woods, lots of young people(mostly in their 20's), sharp pointy things and a body count. At this point, all of the factions of the red army have united into a unified whole which should be the zenith of the movement, but instead proves to be its undoing. Military training metastasizes into a microcosm of the cultural revolution then happening in China, thus rendering a promising force inert. Even worse is that Nagata(Akie Namiki) and Mori(Go Jibiki) use the whole process of Maoist self-critique to settle old scores.(Ironically, Mori had deserted the movement under fire previously but was let back in when most of the leadership had been arrested.) Afterwards, political debates extend to what kind of cookies are anti-revolutionary.(For me, it's mint cookies.) In any case, the most revolutionary behavior should involve kindness, not cruelty.
Even then, this is not the end of the Japanese Red Army, as the endnote lists a group of future actions, including one that was dramatized in "Carlos."
Super Reviewer
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Latest News on United Red Army
May 27, 2011:
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Foreign Titles
- United Red Army (Jitsuroku rengo sekigun: Asama sanso e no michi) (DE)
- United Red Army (Jitsuroku rengo sekigun: Asama sanso e no michi) (UK)
The focus is on the protests in Japan against treaties with the United States that threaten to turn the country into one big aircraft carrier. As the police presence hardens, the protesters become increasingly more confrontational and militant, eventually imagining themselves an army, seeking guns by the end of 1972.
The second part has all the ingredients of a horror movie including an isolated cabin in the woods, lots of young people(mostly in their 20's), sharp pointy things and a body count. At this point, all of the factions of the red army have united into a unified whole which should be the zenith of the movement, but instead proves to be its undoing. Military training metastasizes into a microcosm of the cultural revolution then happening in China, thus rendering a promising force inert. Even worse is that Nagata(Akie Namiki) and Mori(Go Jibiki) use the whole process of Maoist self-critique to settle old scores.(Ironically, Mori had deserted the movement under fire previously but was let back in when most of the leadership had been arrested.) Afterwards, political debates extend to what kind of cookies are anti-revolutionary.(For me, it's mint cookies.) In any case, the most revolutionary behavior should involve kindness, not cruelty.
Even then, this is not the end of the Japanese Red Army, as the endnote lists a group of future actions, including one that was dramatized in "Carlos."