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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Carlos (Film)

by Cara Nash | April 27, 2011 16:37 | Edited April 27, 2011 16:38

Meticulous in factual detail, wonderfully cinematic and driven by Edgar Ramirez’s stunning lead performance, this is an absolutely riveting biopic.

Originally produced as a five-and-a-half-hour French mini-series, the feature version about the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos The Jackal has been edited down to a still sprawling 155 minutes. Commendably though, it flows exceptionally well. With the incredibly perceptive Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours, Irma Vep) at the helm, Carlos feels both meticulous in its factual detail and dazzlingly cinematic. It is simply one of the most compelling biopics of recent times. 

 

The film opens in Paris in 1973, with the self-assured 23-year-old Carlos Sanchez (Edgar Ramirez) aligning himself with The Popular Front For The Liberation Of Palestine (PFLP). After heading a number of deadly and largely bungled missions, Carlos is put in charge of the December 1975 raid on an OPEC conference in Vienna. It's a heart-thumping, terrifying and telling mission which represents the dramatic tipping point for both Carlos and the film. Cutting ties with the PFLP and exiled from numerous countries, Carlos' life drifts into sloth and irrelevance.

 

Ramirez (The Bourne Ultimatum) is absolutely magnetic in the lead role, powerfully capturing all the facets of the complex Carlos. Backed by a post-punk soundtrack, and with the image-conscious Carlos waging revolution in a leather jacket and Che-style beret, the film feels dangerously thrilling at times. One begins to wonder uneasily whether Assayas is trying to glamorise the terrorism, or the perpetrator, before realising that this is how Carlos sees himself - as some type of revolutionary rock star. He revels in the worldwide headlines and attention that he garners for his exploits, which feed his indulgences for women and power and call his true motives into question.

 

Both a portrait of a world caught in the turmoil of terrorism, and an intimate sketch of an idealist turned activist, this film - like its subject - ends up a bundle of complex but endlessly fascinating contradictions.