Carlos (2010)

I thought I should write about a TV mini-series this week, since I didn't talk about anything on this production area on my blog. Especially considering this is pretty much everything I've seen in the last two weeks. And on top of that, I had quite high expectations from it, because it has a Golden Globe, was quite appreciated at Cannes and scored also 94 on Metacritic.

The movie has three parts, following the life of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, mostly known on the name in the title, from the time he joined the Front of the Liberation of Palestine in the beginning of the '70s up to his capture in '94. Despite the fact that each part starts with a sort of a disclaimer that can make you think that pretty much all you'll gonna see is fiction, I think this is probably caused by legal issues due to the fact that the only accusations proven in court are two crimes, and for some of the rest there is still a trial going on. So, even if the movie has a certain degree of "story enrichment", I could say that has a lot of value from a documentary point of view. It's like a sort of mini-history of terrorism of the '70s - '90s period of the areas in the world where Carlos activated. One fact that's interesting is that unlike other productions, what you see here is handled quite neutrally. This is if you take it as a whole, because considering the little pieces you have of course the drama part that can add to the emotional factor. But it doesn't add that much, and finally, you can't say that you have a movie trying to put the main character neither in a negative nor positive light. It's like I said, neutral - you have strictly the facts, and from these you can create your own impression. On one side I could appreciate this but overall for me it was a bit "dry" as general feeling.

Getting to the actors + the technical part, the lead role played by Edgar Ramirez, covering 20 years of Carlos' life would've been Oscar material if this was a big screen production. For those 20 years, the movie travels through most of the '70s - '80s Europe and the Arab countries of the the same period trying to keep an authentic look. The are lines in at leas seven languages (you have English, Arab, French, Spanish, German, Hungarian and Russian). What I did like and I didn't like in the same time is the cinematography, editing and sound part. I liked these (especially the editing) because they manage to keep you focused to the action, thing that isn't that easy taking into account the length of the movie. I didn't like them because (leaving apart some scenes) generally these give the same "dry" atmosphere that works for a documentary but not so much for a movie in general ... (well, maybe it's a matter of taste).

I think the final rating I'll give is a bit lower than the actual movie value, but like said above it might be just a matter of taste, coming mostly from the overall movie production value than from it's action or subject. I would recommend it as movie that should be seen, at least for the part written "between the lines" to put it like this (considering that in the years depicted there was also IRA, ETA, and other groups activity going on) ... meaning that the "global terrorist threat" (to use a standard cliche) is indisputably smaller today, despite all the fuss after 9/11, than it was in the '70s-'80s (well, maybe it depends also on the continent you're talking about).

Rating: 3 out of 5