The riveting “United Red Army” is set in pre-quake Japan, when all the country had to worry about was left-wing student revolutionaries.
It opens with this disclaimer: “The events are all true — but some fiction has been incorporated.”
The action is divided into three parts: a primer on demonstrations in the 1960s led by the ultra-militant United Red Faction; an examination of the group’s inner turmoil, which led to “deviant” members being brutalized and even murdered by their cohorts; and, finally, a televised 10-day police siege of a ski lodge in which five of the faction’s extremists are holed up.
The film ends with a coda that updates radical Japanese politics through the present.
Running more than three hours, “United Red Army” is a raw mix of documentary and fiction, directed by Koji Wakamatsu, a veteran of soft-core porn (“Go, Go Second Time Virgin”) whose anti-war stunner “Caterpillar” just played here.
A supporter of leftist groups in the ’60s, he refrains from glorifying his film’s hard-liners. If anything, he sees them as naive fools.