Popular reviews

• 

  Review by matt lynch ★★★★★ 1

  Dot dash
  Dip flash
  Don't crash

• 

  Review by matt lynch ★★★★★ 2

  commodification of armed struggle.

• 

  Review by Luca ★★★★★ 3

  Guerrilla war struggle is a new entertainment 

  Gang of Four- 5:45

  Terror itself is a commodity. There is value in the violence. Not the aftermath- the extinguished life, nor the damaged structure. The value of terror is in the spectacle. Carlos shoots right between the nose, not for effectiveness, but for the brutal spectacle. As often we expect from the movies pink mist sprays out from the back of their heads, but here it is real. We are consumers of violence when it is sold to us by Hollywood, why would we stop when it’s real. Why do we stop when it’s Carlos who is selling?  The news gives terror power, we give terror power. Violence is sexual, the thrill…

• 

  Review by Joe ★★★★★

  Every rock biopic has a scene late in the hero's career where they get the review that means they're truly finished and their time in the limelight is effectively up. Here it happens right after Carlos finds out that he and his group are being kicked out of Syria - he blames it on President Bush, but one of his associates gives his opinion that not Bush or anybody else really cares about him anymore, then he delivers the bomb: It's not Rolling Stone or some TV critic that calls him a washed-up communist winebag, it's the CIA. It's a tough business, especially if you've got talent.

• 

  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★

  "Behind every bullet we fire, there will be an idea."

  Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, aka "Carlos the Jackal," spends his time with a lot of women over the course of Olivier Assayas's Carlos, but the first is perhaps the most revealing. Carlos explains his plan to her, to unite the disparate leftish struggles against imperialism and capitalism going on around the world into one international movement and to fight the establishment with guerilla warfare, to which she responds with double meaning, "Ilich, fighting capitalism with guerilla means is romantic, but doomed to failure." Here, she means that guerilla warfare is "romantic" in the sense that it is a sort of idealistic fantasy, but over the course of this almost 6 hour…

• 

  Review by Avery Edison ★★★★½ 1

  My main takeaway from this film is that is was really fucking easy to be a terrorist in the '70s.

• 

  Review by Dragonknight 3

  Part of My Top 10 Films of 2010

  ”Words get us nowhere. It’s time for action.”

  Note: This review is based on the 319 minute version.

  In an epic five and half hour film, Olivier Assayas tells the story of one of the most wanted criminals of 20th century, the notorious international terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez better known as Carlos The Jackal. Assayas focuses on left wing revolutionary fighters in Middle East and Eastern Europe during 70s and 80s which allows him to dissect some of the most enigmatic international events of the time. The film’s events happen in a period of more than 20 years and it follows Carlos in his different missions across the world: France, England, Netherlands,…

• 

  Review by Owen ★★★★

  a near 6-hour epic that's as bold a piece as i've come to expect from Assayas yet still staggering in the broadness of its scope. Édgar Ramírez's performance is flawless, and the way he both physically and emotionally embodies the titular revolutionary is astonishing. this film is a lot to take in at once and since i viewed it over the course of a day the scale of everything felt much vaster as a whole...the entire OPEC sequence is really something you need to see to believe. this is a masterfully made biopic that explores Sánchez's life with great depth and the entire film is really a visionary accomplishment from front to back. taut, tense, and tragic.

• 

  Review by Auteur ★★★★★ 1

  The Godfather of international terrorist films, and nothing less than director Olivier Assayas' magnum opus. I don't think I've ever seen a film this long, that skips through a character's life with such clarity, and attention to detail, that never once becomes confusing or threatens to lose my interest, and holding all 330 minutes together is a phenomenal performance by Édgar Ramírez. He gets such throwaway roles in Hollywood - Joy, Point Break, Gold - it's a fucking shame considering how electrifying and commanding he is here in every second, as an enigmatic, slippery, self-proclaimed revolutionary, fighting for Palestinian freedom. Assayas' film traces Carlos' movements throughout his "active" years, climbing to fame and notoriety through specific, historical events, while his…

• 

  Review by Cam Soutter ★★★★★ 3

  One of the very few films/miniseries I've seen for which I can passionately and honestly claim: Every single scene is a masterpiece. 

  Fictionalized for its own good, brilliantly and cinematically. The extensive amount of research, ambition, and dedication it took to make this film is beyond my comprehension. 

  Cheers to Assayas, and every individual who was involved in putting together this spectacular project.

• 

  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★½ 5

  61/100 (up from 56)

  Rather a different experience than I had at its Cannes premiere, with the OPEC raid seeming less of a standout and the final section in Sudan seeming less of a slog. It's essentially the flipside of Zero Dark Thirty—a dogged procedural told from the terrorist's point of view. I still maintain that it isn't really about much of anything, though, apart from perhaps the intricacies of political expediency as it relates to sponsorship and asylum; there's a weird sort of black comedy in play as Carlos gets bounced from one country to another over the course of two decades and five hours. Note to preston: It is absurd that you still haven't seen this. Get over your allergy to long films, Assayas fanboy.

• 

  Review by Caroline ★★★★½

  All Edgar Ramirez knows is smoke cig, speak 5 languages fluently, hypnotize audience by embodying a chilling narcissistic disregard for human life under the guise of revolutionary righteousness, and lie