Carlos The Jackal (Complete) [DVD]

Cant recommend this highly enough. Incredible directing, acting and cinematography lavished on a story worthy of the time, money and effort. It's film making that credits the viewer with intelligence and doesn't dumb down like so many Hollywood films do. Ramirez is superb as the preening,narcissistic international terrorist come international playboy. The film feels worthy of Oscars though whether it will be classified as a movie or tv im not sure. At 6 hours long you set off thinking it could be a struggle to get through but it absolutely flies by. There is a shorter version i believe but why miss out on seeing it as the director intended it to be seen? If you liked Bourne Identity, Mesrine, Syriana or anything of that ilk you should love this.

This is a fascinating film and Edgar Ramirez does a remarkable job as Carlos. The casting is generally excellent with a huge variety of different linguistic and ethnic parts played with an astonishing degree of accuracy, even their English accents, when they speak English, matches reality. The one fault, and it is a major fault, is the decision to only subtitle when English is not spoken. There is hardly a native English part anywhere and most English accents are very thick and hard to understand even for those that may be familiar with such accents. For those that have little experience in this field, large parts of the English dialoge, (which could be as high as 20% of the total), is extremely hard to follow. A real shame. I have marked down the final rating purely because of this serious shortcoming. The Blu-ray transfer, which is spread over 3 discs, includes the shortened cinema version as well as the full 5 hour plus version, and is pretty good.

This film is a tour de force by a gifted director and a brilliant new actor. It is 350 minutes long and split into 3 episodes over 3 DVDs, but I was sorry when it ended. Edgar Ramirez played the central character of Carlos with so much understated style and simmering violence, he was fascinating to watch. I have lived through Carlos' entire career, some of the time in Paris, and this film is so believable. It is not a documentary. The director himself points out in an interview on disc 3 that it is part fact, part fiction, because he had to fictionalise events that are not documented, but it is evident that he had a lot of research material to work from. For many years the authorities had only one indistinct photograph of Carlos, who was also a master of disguise and a chameleon who could change his appearance, and, of course, changed naturally over the years. That is all apparent in this film. The man matures as the film progresses but his basic nature does not change. He was dangerous. He scares people but also excites them. He used the media to his own ends. He was a marxist, he said, and later converted to Islam but one always has the impression that he really only believes in himself and his own agenda. He and his faithful German sidekick Weinrich would visit their paymasters looking like a couple of businessmen doing a deal, and they had contacts throughout the world of revolutionaries, from Moscow to Tripoli, East Germany to the Basque territories. They used the Stasi by playing the Soviet card when it suited them; they used terror to browbeat the Hungarian secret service into cooperating with them. They used the PFLP as a cover for some of their worst atrocities such as the killings in the Rue Marbeuf in Paris, or the OPEC kidnappings in Vienna. The interaction between Carlos and Sheikh Yamani is a superb little vignette, played against a background of unremitting violence.

A word about language. It is billed as being in French with English subtitles. In fact everyone speaks their own language, so much of the film actually takes place in English. There are sequences in Arabic, in Spanish, in German, in French and in other languages. Carlos speaks Arabic with Arabs, French with Frenchmen, German with Germans, Spanish with South Americans and English with almost everyone else. All except the English sequences are subtitled in English, but as I speak French and German in addition to my native English and understand Spanish and some Arabic it was no trouble for me to follow everything. The body language and continuity also contribute to the flow. My German girlfriend had no trouble following it either.

Edgar Ramirez with his multilingualism and his quiet-spoken manner interspersed with outbreaks of terrifying violence is a great discovery. He plays Carlos so convoncingly that it is easy to forget that he is acting. This from a man in his first rôle is amazing. Despite its length I shall watch this film again and again. It is spellbinding. It is worthy of general release but is too long for the cinema. Canal+ made it for TV but it is a crossover between TV and cinema. It is reminiscent of the Baader Meinhof Complex and Mesrine both of which have comparable qualities, but, in my view, it surpasses both of these admirable productions. As I said at the beginning, a tour de force, a major work that deserves a wide audience. I cannot recommend it highly enough.