United Red Army

A Knockout
United Red Army chronicles the emergence of this radical leftist group and follows its members to imprisonment, escape, or death. The film begins with an amazing sequence of archival footage from the 60's showing the rise of the radical student movement in Japan, its clashes with police and subsequent militarization. After two of their 29 members are executed as defectors, the remaining URAs travel to a hidden mountain training camp which ends in a kind of despotic insanity. Forced by the leaders to undergo "self-critique", many of the young fighters naively admit such petty wrongs as egotism, love and vanity. One by one, twelve more are executed for "defeatism".

Mr. Wakamatsu seems to be asking: How could so many young and beautiful people, with clearly noble aspirations, spiral down into such a tragedy? This question haunts us throughout the film as the huge cast of actors, almost like models in tableaus, "play characters" whose names and ages (and fates, for some)...

Koji Wakamatsu's "United Red Army" is absorbing, intriguing but also shocking, unnerving and brutal!
From the 1960's through the 1970's, it was a turbulent time in Japan.

Dismayed about America's involvement in the Vietnam War, dismayed of Japan for the renewal of the Security Treat with the US, allowing the U.S. to refuel in Yokota Air Force Base and the American military presence in Okinawa to dismay of the treatment of students at the university but most importantly, anger towards then Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.

Seeing how student revolutions were taking part all over the globe, especially in the United States against the Vietnam War and revolutions taking place in other countries, it was a beginning of the Japanese Student Left.

Massive demonstrations took place in Japan in which protestors (which included many students) would fight against the police and in the process, a few protestors were killed but the demonstrations by students against their universities due to tuition increases would lead to boycottts of classes but others had bigger...

great first hour but can't sustain the momentum
Only problem with this overly long "fillum" was a dire need of editing plus the director totally blew the ending because, as you could probably tell from the flat soap opera TV quality to the cinematography, they had zero budget. The final day of the siege was actually broadcast all day on TV nationally in Japan and the iconic image of that day was this huge wrecking ball dangled from a helicopter that was swung into the inn to kick-start the police charge to free the lone hostage. Also, the police charge into the building was not shot very well as the movie doesn't show what actually happened as two cops got killed and a further hour-long battle ensued trying to get at the lefty loonies who were holed up on the top floor. Then there was another cop who lost an eyeball thanks to one deadeye United Red Army shot. Plus the whole layout of the inn used in the movie was so wimpy. The actual inn was massive and solid as a rock really as it was built basically into the side of a...

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