ShangLuda Admirable film.

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

laffnj Carlos the Jackal does way to much to be something that its not. A film more about the story then the entertainment. The long running time (2h: 45m) gives you the feeling that, like with any long running film, that it will be an absolute masterpiece or a boring film that drags on forever. This film was centered right in the middle. Its depiction of the greatest terrorist to ever lived shows glimpses of a genius masterpiece, but with such long intervals between great scenes it makes it a struggle to hold complete attention till the end. Keeping attention till the very end comes with no reward, expecting an exciting ending that makes the nearly three-hour movie worthwhile never comes. Although Edgar Ramirez was a picture perfect Carlos and gave one of the performances of his career, in which he deserved his Golden Globe nominations. If you're interested in the story rather then the entertainment, then you will enjoy this movie. Entertainment wise, it's not the greatest.

Eumenides_0 Carlos, the biopic about the famous international terrorist who took the world by storm in the final decades of the Cold War, is an ambitious, intelligent and exciting political thriller in the tradition of the best this genre has created. Edited from the 3-part mini-series made for French television, it stars Venezuelan actor Édgar Ramírez as the protagonist in an impeccable performance. Almost unknown before this, hopefully his Golden Globe nomination will catapult him into great roles in the silver screen soon.The movie is good but the mini-series is much superior.The problem with subtracting is that you must know how to cover your tracks well. Unfortunately some clumsy editing hurts the film version; every time a scene fades to black the viewer won't help wondering just what was cut. This becomes especially noticeable in the second half of the movie, which deals with Carlos' years of decline. Ten years of his life, too many settings, too many characters are crammed in too short an amount of time to look organic, to let the viewer breathe and absorb all the information.The editing, however, is nearly invisible in the earlier part of the movie, which deals mostly with his terrorist exploits across the world, culminating with the extraordinary raid on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, in 1975, that ended with dozens of world ministers kidnapped and flown out of the country by Carlos and his men. It's in these sequences that the movie resembles old-fashioned thrillers. Think of slow burners like All The President's Men or Three Days of the Condor for a good idea of the movie's look and feel.In fact Carlos is the late offspring and a love letter to the '70s, especially its cinema. Director Olivier Assayas's style would be unthinkable without the minimalist, introspective film language filmmakers like Alan J. Pakula, Francesco Rossi or Jean-Pierre Melville developed to breathe a new life into the thriller. I personally miss the grubby realism, the sparse dialogues, the menacing silences, the carefully-shot sequences of those movies; and in the age of super-duper secret agents a la Jason Bourne who can take on whole armies and of dizzying hand-held camera shots, this careful style, with its steady camera, sounds wonderfully fresh and full of possibilities. Let's hope more filmmakers start using it again.The movie also doesn't hide its interest in being a period piece. The movie powerfully restores the period to life: the music, the cool leather jackets and the silly bell bottoms, the chain smoking (how many packs must they've smoked throughout the movie?) in public spaces, the shocking lack of airport security; even the sexism of the age was captured in the Carlos' ambivalent attitude towards women.The cold war should distant enough in our memories to finally receive some intelligent attention. While Hollywood continues to be nostalgic about cartoonish Russian conspiracies and spies (Salt), Europe has been doing sensible movies about these troubled decades, like The Lives of Others, Farewell and now Carlos. More than just a compilation of trivia, the movie is a careful look at a period when people were divided in communists and imperialists. The movie shows how terrorists like Carlos managed to move through the world thanks to the help of ordinary people who shared his ideals, like foreign students living in Europe. Being committed meant working for the good of the revolution in any possible way, it meant hiding guns under beds and sheltering revolutionaries in flats.The film version sadly simplifies this matter, so that's another reason to watch the mini-series. It also includes the dozens of people, some famous others not so much, who were part of Carlos' life. The TV version can intimidate any viewer with its huge cast of minor characters: mostly members of the secret services and political leaders. Through Carlos we get a disturbing look at the promiscuity of the world's secret services, agencies that not only spied on each other but sometimes helped each other, in a complicated web of agents and double agents, of betrayals and looking the other way in exchange for small favours (a political assassination here, smuggling arms there). This way Carlos also travelled around the world protected by governments and intelligence agencies.The movie follows traditional narratives of crime movies in the vein of Goodfellas and City of God: first the rise of Carlos the terrorist playboy superstar; then his slow descent into oblivion, precipitated by alcoholism, obesity and illness, until his eventual downfall. Ramírez' role was physically demanding and he had to put on a lot of weight to play the character in his later years; it's a testament to his talent that he manages to change subtler things too, like the way he walks or the pitch of his voice. He also gets right inside Carlos' personality giving us an extravagant, cocky but also undignified portrayal of the terrorist. The movie plays Carlos as a rock star who lives furiously knowing that he'll die on the battlefield or assassinated. His obsession with a heroic death is one of the Carlos' psychological aspects better explored here and also an ironic counterpoint to Carlos' real but far more pathetic ending.For a serious and unglamorous look at terrorism and politics, Carlos has few rivals at the moment. Whereas others retreat into fantasies about CIA-sponsored child super-assassins (Hanna) or try to fool themselves into thinking journalists are still heroes (State of Play) and not just hired hands in the service of spin, here's a movie that shows the world as it is: violent, treacherous, driven by money and egos, populated by ordinary people whose dreams and ambitions don't mean much to those in power. Perhaps it's not as spectacular or uplifting as the pabulum out there, but for my money it's infinitely more rewarding.

chu_mimi I caught a glimpse of it on Sundance Channel here in the US and ended up watching the whole piece as a 3-episode series.Thanks to Sundance for showing it un-cut and un-edited, it really shows their respect for the efforts of film makers, and as an audience I really appreciate being able to watch it as the director intended it.Really love the story, you can tell Olivier Assayas did a really thorough job in his research. As many reviews said, it's historical facts+real news footage+some fictional imagination, but all of them combined made a great story.Only one small detail I found amusing: the actual event of the attack on OPEC in Vienna took place in December, but they must have filmed it in the summer because one can tell the city is so GREEN in the background; as someone who has lived in Vienna that was simply impossible in winter. But please don't get me wrong, this small detail does not change the fact that this is one of the best movies I've ever seen.

runamokprods Fascinating 5 hour plus, 3 part film about Carlos the Jackal (although he never actually called himself that) the headline grabbing terrorist of the 70s and 80s. With little exposition, we're dropped into a whirlwind of violence, self-aggrandizement, sexual seduction, and power games, moving at an almost dizzying speed. The film allows us to slowly figure out Carlos, instead of explain him in a simple facile way. While never sympathetic, somehow the amazing Edgar Rameriez allows us to feel for this id and ego driven creature, powered far more by the need for attention and adulation (whether from women or the press) than by true belief. Indeed, one of the most interesting things about the film is how (intentionally) shallow and hollow Carlos's political monologues ring.The last 1/3 is the slowest and hardest to sit through. Carlos's slow decline into ineffectiveness and unimportance is sometimes patience trying. But Rob Nelson, in his excellent Village Voice review makes a strong argument that this is a) unavoidable after the high paced rush of the first two parts and 2) part of the point of the film; without his fixes of women and power there wasn't much to Carlos, and without them both he and we want it to be over. This is a film I'd like to see again. While I don't quite agree (yet) with the many critics who have hailed this as of the best films of last 10 years, I do think it's a challenging, brilliantly acted, wonderfully made film, that gives context both to modern terrorism and recent world history. Add to that, an exploration of the blurring fine line between power and uncontrolled narcissism that seems to dog leaders (especially male) of all political stripes from Hitler to Bill Clinton to George Bush to Carlos.That's a lot to cover, even in 5 hours.