(IsraelNN.com) A new German film has created a glamorous aura around the most brutal terrorist group in that nation's postwar history, the Baader-Meinhof gang, also known as the Red Army Faction (RAF).

The "Baader-Meinhof Complex" mega-movie production which opened last week to rave reviews is based on the book of the same name by Stefan Aust, the former editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel magazine.

The film purports to show the German people how the RAF terror group "really was" – but according to the state officials and the families of its victims, may have managed to create a new pop icon instead.

A full-fledged Hollywood-style action-packed thriller, the two and a half-hour film spans the gang's ten years of terror, starting with its genesis after a student was killed in the late 1960's, and ending with the 1977 suicides of the gang's leaders in a high-security prison.

The film is chillingly accurate in its depiction of the gruesome details of the 34 murders carried out by the gang, right down to the number of bullets fired in each and the gory scenes showing horrifically injured U.S. military personnel in the aftermaths of bombing attacks on American bases in Frankfurt and Heidelberg.

Most of Germany's top actors and actresses won roles in the film. The wild success of the film prompted Bettina Roehl, the daughter of gang founder Ulrike Meinhof, to declare sadly in her blog that "it would not be possible to top [the] hero worship" that the film has led to.

Victims' families and state officials agreed, slamming the film for its elevation of the gang members into Hollywood icons. 

Mega-star Moritz Bleibtreu, who played the lead role of Baader, in fact made a special effort to enhance the macho image of his character. He deliberately avoided including his well-documented speech disorder in his portrayal of the terrorist ringleader, who was said to be a "Marlon Brando type," saying it would have caused the film to appear inappropriately comical.

Relegated to a Bloody Past

The RAF, which existed from the late 1960's to the early 1990's, opposed Israel as an arm of American "imperialism" and equated Zionism with racism.  The group also justified the Nazi genocide of the Jews.

Most of the group's bombings and assassinations were carried out in the 1970's and 1980's; The people murdered by the RAF included 30 prominent Germans as well as a number of United States military personnel.

The group cooperated with Palestinian terrorists but – a common misconception notwithstanding – was not involved in the 1976 Entebbe hijacking. In 1977 Palestinians hijacked a Lufthansa Boeing 737 to Mogadishu and threatened to blow it up if members of the RAF were not released from German jails. The hijackers were killed in a counter-terror raid.