Carlos
Starring: Edgar Ramirez
DVD mini-series
From the first car bomb assassination in the back streets of Paris it is clear that this journey back to the alphabetti spaghetti of ‘70s terror groups is a quality Euro production.
Not your usual half-a-street wrecking Hollywood cataclysm, the blast is barely enough to blow out the car’s windows and singe the fuzzy dice.
This sets the tone for Carlos, the nom de guerre of the jet-setting international Venezuelan uber-terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez and his quest to export the communist bloc Marxist-Leninist revolution.
Think of him as an updated urban sophisticate version of Che Guevara and his exploits as a precursor to Osama Bin Ladin’s global attack on Western capitalism.
The series follows his career of killings, bombings and abductions across Europe and the Middle East as he throws his lot in with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
It’s made clear that some of what the program pins on Carlos is hard to prove and so it should be taken as a work of fiction.
However, most authorities blame him for many of the actions depicted and it certainly gives some idea of his activities as a Cold War Moscow-funded lackey.
His headline grabbing exploits included organizing the hostage taking raid on the French Embassy in The Hague and his storming of the Vienna meeting of the world’s oil producing nations during which three people were shot dead and 60 ministers and staff held to ransom.
After threatening to kill a hostage every 15 minutes he was allowed to fly out of the country on an airliner full of his captives which he eventually agreed to release for a reported $20 million.
This brings him to the height of his notoriety, his media name of Carlos the Jackal, and the added mystique of his ability to melt away and elude Western authorities for years during which time he was the world’s most wanted man.
However, as much as Carlos killed his enemies he also had a knack of alienating his friends and the PFLP disowned him for having failed to kill any oil ministers.
So then Carlos was left as a free-roaming machine-gun for hire during which time he carried out the murderous bidding of Iraq and Syria before settling down behind the Iron Curtain with the support of the East German state security agency the Stasi to carry on his campaign of geopolitical destabilisation.
Edgar Ramirez (Zero Dark Thirty) plays Carlos as the hugely confident, womanising, self-righteous, arrogant and ultimately vain villain.
He must have been a shoo-in for the part. He shares a name with his subject, looks (a bit) like him, comes from the same part of Venezuela and also speaks several languages.
And it is that easy transition between tongues and sub-titles that adds weight to the international flavour and explains why Carlos was such a linchpin of the cause.
But for Carlos history moved on and despite his efforts it was the Berlin Wall that became destabilised and revolution was replaced with political realignment in which he became a new world order liability with few friends to protect him.
They say that if you can remember the ’60s you weren’t there. I’d add that if you want to remember the ’70s you weren’t there.
However, having been there, I’d say this is an exception.
– MARK CLANCY
