Terrorist on the run : The Fall of Carlos

If there were any remnant of sympathy you might have had for "Carlos" during the first two parts of the miniseries, you're pretty much sure to have no sympathy at all for him in part 3 and at the conclusion; in a pattern fairly typical of stories about the rise and fall of a criminal mind or criminal enterprise (think of the 3 parts of the Godfather), but the third part, the declining arc of the story, the protagonist - Carlos - becomes narcissistic (he even undergoes liposuction), paranoid, physically decrepit, and extremely violent, his worst traits exagerrated as his actual power wanes and his better traits obscured. Carlos no longer seems to be fighting for a cause, but only for himself and his ego. The third and final part of the miniseries follows his from country to country in exile - even his former Arab backers, happy enough to use him when he was in his prime - have no use for him any longer. He's horrible to his (various) wives and indifferent to his cadre. Perhaps most telling - if there was any virtue at all in his earlier acts of terrorism it was because he, in his warped way, believed he was fight for the oppressed and because he was willing to put his life at risk in service to the cause. Late in his career, he reverts to the completely craven behavior of planting car bombs and suitcase bombs, that detonate with no warning in fact - no bravery there, just pure cruelty. And there is little talk of any cause other than revenging slights and affronts. Still a totally powerful and captivating series, but hardly a heart-warmer.

Tough questions: Do you identify with Carlos? Do you admire him?

Part 2 of "Carlos" is equally, maybe more, exciting than part 1 (3-part mini-series version), especially the first half or so, which is a detailed and brutal depiction of a hostage taking, Carlos and three fellow-terrorist storm an OPEC meeting (today, impossible) and take the entire roomful of OPEC ministers as hostages, ultimately freeing some and taking off by plan from Vienna to Algiers. Many things go wrong with the plan, and we're with Carlos every second as he deals with every obstacle and condition - truly one of the most visceral movie segments ever done. One strange question for any viewer is: do you identify with Carlos? Do you sympathize? Part of the excellence of this miniseries is that you do, kind of - you admire his panache and even his idealism (he's no mercenary - he's a true believer), and you have to catch yourself, or at least I did, and remind yourself at times that he's a cold-blooded killer, and that, though I may have shared some of his left-wing ideology at one time and probably still do to an extent (though no great sympathizer with radical Arab causes, obviously), I never condoned the kind of actions he takes on: killing of innocents, attacks on civilians, terror at the barrel of a gun. He's horrible and scary and, though an idealist himself he works with some who are morally corrupt (the Stasi, Arab thugs) - buut it's hard not to watch him and be fascinated about how he goes about his chilling work.

Idealism, solidarity, sex, philosophy - and contempt for human life : Carlos

"Carlos," Part one of the 3-part TV miniseries (it also exists in movie version) is powerful and exciting and chilling, very fast-pace account of the rise of an ideological terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, in 1970s Europe - film begins as a young Carlos offers his services to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, at HQ in Beirut, is assigned to an underling job in Paris, shipped to London for an assassination that goes wrong, and then he's off onto bigger and more dangerous jobs, including airport attacks, hostage-taking - ultimately, at end of part one, someone rats him out and he shoots 3 French detectives and takes off. The pace is rapid and keeps you totally riveted to the action, which is relentless. Maybe it's a little too fast a pace - we learn about Carlos entirely from the outside, from what he does, and very little about who he is and what he thinks and what made him the way he is, he never reflects and there's no back story - which is kind of confusing at times, very difficult to keep straight his many relations with various women. Maybe that's the point - he's rootless. He's not a "hired gun," however (unlike the namesake in The Day of the Jackal); he's ideologically committed. M. wondered whether this kind of film would glorify terrorism, but I think the depiction is so brutal and vulgar that it's unlikely to do so. The terrorists here aren't heroes, even if their cause may at times be just - they're thugs, and their lives are awful. It also captures the era very well - the idealism, the odd mixture of solidarity and sex and folk art and philosophy and contempt for bourgeois values, strangely juxtaposed with contempt for human life.