stephen  d. leece

Try and view the full 338 minute French TV version as opposed to the truncated and therefore bastardised 158 minute version that only appears to be on sale in the UK.

Despite that initial criticism this biopic of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos The Jackal has much going for it, thanks largely due to a cracking performance from Edgar Ramirez in the title role and Lebanese singer Ahmad Kabbour as PFLP Armed Wing leader Wadie Haddad.

Beginning with botched assassinations in London, through to the botched OPEC hostage-taking scheme, failures with a combined RAF and PFLP plane hijacking culminating in Carlos’s most impressive blunder- get captured by the French whilst hiding in the Sudan, this is a warts-and-all biopic of the world’s most over-rated revolutionary.

The only real flaw with the film is the inescapable fact that Carlos is a profoundly boring man- the rich playboy that thought he could take on the world, and ultimately for much of the screen time the viewer is hoping either his Palestinian comrades will do him in, or failing that MI6 or the DGSE will arrange an accident for him.

Carlos is not as tedious a viewing experience as Steven Soderbergh’s two-part biopic of Che Guevara, but neither is it an easy watch.

A film that is best kept in reserve for a boring hassle-free holiday.