Edited down from a highly acclaimed TV mini-series 'Carlos' tells the story of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the Venezuelan terrorist/revolutionary better known as Carlos the Jackal. Commencing with his joining the PFLP, through the 1975 raid on the OPEC meeting in Vienna, his time on the run until his eventual capture in 1994, the film depicts the man as a revolutionary, a terrorist, a mercenary, an arrogant charmer, a megalomaniac, as cold-blooded, but capable of extreme bad temper, and always with a cigarette in hand and never far from a bottle of whisky. Shuffling false passports like a pack of cards this playboy is seemingly irresistible to women whom he frequently abuses; sex and guns seem closely linked in his mind. He is a man who demands absolute obedience from his followers, yet invariably disobeys orders from his own boss. A man who achieved great notoriety, but who was often incompetent, and ended his days of freedom as a pathetic alcoholic hiding in Khartoum..
This is a great biopic that leaves you to judge whether the man was himself a tragic victim of the revolutionary fervour that grabbed the world in the late sixties.
The full length mini-series is also available.