United Red Army (2007 - English subs)

United Red Army (実録・連合赤軍 あさま山荘への道程 Jitsuroku Rengo Sekigun: Asama sanso e no michi) is a 2007 film written, directed and produced by Kōji Wakamatsu. It stars Akie Namiki as Hiroko Nagata and Go Jibiki as Tsuneo Mori, the leaders of Japan's leftist paramilitary group the United Red Army. Akie Namiki was nominated for Best Performance by an Actress at the 2008 Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

Story:

The film is told in three acts, beginning with a historical background of Japan's student movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, mostly using archive footage and a narrator. The second act follows the formation of the group to their mountain training camps in the southern Japanese Alps. It emphasizes the dogmatic (and eventually hypocritical) bullying of the group by Mori and Nagata, with 12 members being killed for infractions as small as improperly cleaning a gun, wearing make-up, and kissing. The third act shows the splitting up of the group after two members run off. It follows one group of five members to Karuizawa and a hostage-taking and police standoff known as the Asama-Sansō incident.

Note that though the movie presents Fusako Shigenobu, leader of the international section of the Red Army, Nihon Sekigun, as a romantic, beautiful young woman (giving her role to the most beautiful actor in the crew) and spares her of any crime or misbehavior during the movie, Wakamatsu does not endorse her behavior, calling her in interviews a superficial and manipulative girl towards whom he has no sympathy. Kunio Bando, though not given a particular role in the movie nor spared of his responsibilities in the violent deaths, is the Red Army terrorist that movie portrays as the most realistic.