Don't call him Jackal

One of my favourite late 1990s action movie surprises was the unassuming Aidan Quinn starring The Assignment, about what happens to the man recruited to act as infamous terrorist Carlos the Jackal’s double. It was a well-made, suspenseful feature that shrouded the terrorist in an air of mystery. Now, Carlos is Olivier Assayas’s multilingual, globe-spanning fictionalised history of Ilich “Carlos” Sanchez, the man who would in the 1970s and 1980s become one the world’s most wanted terrorists. There’s a lot of story to tell, and Assayas retains the integrity of Carlos’s story be telling it over a five hour experience – it was shown on French television as a mini-series before the footage was re-edited into a reportedly gripping two and a half hour movie. I cannot imagine watching Carlos in any other form than its mini-series; I have no idea what one would leave out during editing.

When the story begins, Carlos (Edgar Ramirez) is already a champion for his cause, the liberation of Palestine, and has no problem resorting to bombings and attacks to secure the inviolability of the Palestine state. We see Carlos the family man as well as Carlos the terrorist mastermind, and the film has many characters – all introduced by their name and title for the viewer’s convenience – moving in and out of the story to create a dense narrative; some characters never return while certain others become more prominent. Here, Carlos is also painted as a heedless womaniser, and it becomes clear that he surrounded himself with a string of submissive women who would tolerate much to be in some kind of relationship (mostly sexual) with their Marxist leader.

In a way the second part of Carlos tells of his fall and eventual re-establishing in the world of idealised violence and revolution, while the third part brings the story to an end. Part II spends nearly an hour on the film’s centrepiece: the OPEC raid, a tense, well filmed hostage situation that never becomes “action” and is spellbinding. Part III shows the inevitable: how in terrorism, loyalty is always contingent on political climate, and that Carlos’s vanity as celebrity freedom fighter was as much a driving force for his actions as “Das Kapital”.

Assayas is a sometimes uneven filmmaker – I was barely able to get through Boarding Gate – but here he is a master of his subject. Much of what we see are meetings and discussions, yet Carlos is never boring, always moving forward. Assayas shows restraint in the action oriented parts by often only showing the lead-up and aftermath of an attack, with news broadcasts to fill in details. But the anchor of the film is Edgar Ramirez, who as Carlos creates a believable fictionalised persona of the man, aging twenty years through the course of the film and remains distinctly Carlos. It is one of the best performances in recent memory, with Ramirez never resorting to De Niro-like mumbling or Pacino-esque wild haired shouting.

Carlos is very long but very rewarding. Those who liked Munich would do well to seek it out.

Under achievers go large in comedy triple threat

For the first time in a very long time I watched three movies back to back - comedies, to be precise. There are so precious few really funny comedies out there that discovering truly humourous fare is something to be shared and celebrated. 

Adam McKay first collaborated with Will Ferrell on the deservedly legendary “Anchorman”, and “The Other Guys” is the best work that McKay and Ferrell have done since. Ferrell stars with Mark Wahlberg – who displays some good comic timing - as the titular “other guys”, policemen who excel at paperwork and minor crimes while their more flashy colleagues, here embodied by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, get the girls and media attention. Unexpectedly there’s an opportunity for the “other guys” to step up and become super cops themselves, and the result is an entertaining action comedy with some great action and comedy scenes that veer from the predictably humourous to the completely surprising. The opening set piece in particular is spectacular and fittingly exaggerated.

Chris Morris’s “Four Lions” is delightfully transgressive political comedy filmmaking. Starring Riz Ahmend, Adeel Akhtar and Will Adamsdale as a group of friends living in England, the film covers their attempts to become suicide bombers. These attempts include a short-lived stint at an al-Qaeda training camp and flying explosive packages. In between these scenes there are others that play out as if in a thriller, and the ending is unexpectedly emotional. As “Four Lions” pushes the envelope of controversy, the satire cuts to the bone in many scenes, such as those that toy with Western perceptions of suicide bombers. It was in the 1990s that MAD Magazine published comic strips set in terrorist training camps (“If Ahmed has three hand grenades and one accidentally explodes in his hand, how many grenades are left?”) that would become unthinkable after 9/11. A decade after that world flattening event, “Four Lions” is the first film in general release to employ perceptions of ‘terrorists’ in such farcical form. The result is alternately hilarious, moving and generally jaw-dropping.

Nothing prepared me for the genius of Armando Iannucci. Known in the UK for some television work, Iannucci’s “In the Loop” is a brilliant political satire that is also the best-written comedy I’ve seen in a long time, and is probably the best comedy I’ll see all year. The satire is sophisticated and incredibly fast. “In the Loop” lampoons and convincingly demonstrates the constructive or destructive (depending on where you stand on certain issues) role of spin in contemporary politics as political bedfellows America and Britain become involved in a war of words and possibly an actual war due to an ill-informed statement made by the British Secretary of State for International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander). It’s left to politics veteran and misanthropic Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) to spin the situation towards a positive outcome as things get increasingly complicated when, for example, confidential information is mistakenly made public and secret committees are formed. 

The dialogue is profanity laden and colourful; Tucker ends a phone call with a particularly memorable sign-off, while he describes Foster as a “Nazi Julie Andrews” when the latter comes up with the inspirational phrase, “climb the mountain of conflict”. Indeed, it is Tucker who sets the tone when he opens the movie with “Good morning, my little chicks and cocks”, and so kick starts a top class comedy that was sadly, but not  surprisingly, never theatrically released in South Africa. It is available in all good DVD stores, ready to kill the souls of those who flock to Adam Sandler movies.