trailer break: ‘The Baader Meinhof Complex’

Yeah, the trailer is in German, with no subtitles, but you kind of don’t need them. If you want, though, there’s a different trailer aimed at English-speaking audiences at the official British site for the film. It’s not as sexy as this one, though: it calls these fun-loving wags “Europe’s most notorious terrorists.” The German trailer, on the other hand, makes it look pretty cool to have been a radical turned violent revolutionary.

(I wish that British trailer was embeddable, because it’s so very different from this one. Comparing them side by side is a fascinating look at how one product -- a single movie -- can be sold in such different ways.)

The film is based on a nonfiction book about Germany’s Red Army Faction, which did a lot of naughty things -- assassinations, blowing up VW Beetles, that kind of stuff -- in the 1960s and 70s. And it’s from the same folks who gave us the last-days-of-Hitler drama Downfall, which could have been all mushy about the Fuhrer -- I mean, what, we’re supposed to feel sorry that he killed himself in that bunker, or what? -- but of course never went anywhere near there. The British critics seem to like this one, at least.

The Baader Meinhof Complex is now playing in the U.K.; no U.S. release date has been announced yet.