"Your days of plenty are numbered." This is one of the warnings left behind by self-styled rebels the Edukators. They break into rich folks' homes, rearrange the furniture, and leave notes in an effort to generate fear. If their targets feel violated, reasons Jan (Daniel Brühl), the idealistic leader of the gang of two, they might worry they are being watched, or think twice about their next bank deposit. They might even want to do something good with their money.

Jan and his partner Peter (Stipe Erceg) tell Peter's girlfriend, Jule (Julia Jentsch), that they're sneaking out at night to "put up posters," which is in line with their other low-impact protest — harassing shoe salesmen for supporting a ruthless capitalist system. When the cops come to round them up, the agitators know the drill. It's a small disruption, but they've made a statement.

Things change when Jan pursues his crush on Jule, leading to an exchange of ideals. "I can't find anything I really want to believe in," sighs Jule, while Jan concedes that compromise is inevitable. "What was subversive then, you can buy in shops today: Che Guevara T-shirts or anarchy stickers," he says. "For all revolutions, one thing is clear. Even if some didn't work, the best ideas survived."

Eventually, Jan lets her in on the secret, then plans an "Edukators-style" home invasion of Hardenberg (Burghart Klaußner), whose dented Mercedes is the source of Jule's money problems. The trio get Hardenberg tied up in their van, unsure what to do next. Thinking they might turn their adventure into a "'70s-style political kidnapping," they hide him in an empty cabin, smoke pot and engage in late-night conversations about global iniquities, debt cancellation and contemporary politics. As Hardenberg puts it, his captors are "no better than terrorists: You use the same methods, spreading fear and panic."

Complications surface when Hardi, as they come to call him, describes his own days of rebellion in 1968 (he was a leader of SDS), and his sense of compromise and disappointment — even his feeling that he's "in jail," not freed by his money and power. "I'm the wrong scapegoat," he insists. "I play the game. I didn't make up the rules."

By the end, it's clear that everyone's playing by someone else's rules, as the three friends come to terms with their "stuffy bourgeois ethics." While The Edukators doesn't offer much in the way of original thinking, it does render its philosophical meanderings in evocative, lyrical imagery — jump cuts and mobile frames, lovely natural light, pale green meadows and smoky nights — that recall Dogme95 and French New Wave, both rule-breaking and rule-making movements.

The Edukators Directed by Hans Weingartner An IFC release Opens Friday at Ritz Bourse recommended