Carlos (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Fascinating 5 hour plus, 3 part film about Carlos the Jackal (although he never called himself that) the headline grabbing terrorist of the 70s and 80s. Never stopping for exposition, or to ‘explain’ how Carlos got to be is who he is, we’re dropped into a whirlwind of violence, self-aggrandizement, sexual seduction, and power games -- all moving at an almost dizzying speed. The film allows us to slowly figure out Carlos for ourselves, instead of explaining him in a simple or facile way.While never sympathetic, somehow the amazing Edgar Rameriez allows us to feel for this id and ego driven creature, who would never admit it even to himself, but who was powered far more by the need for attention and adulation (whether with women or terrorism) than by true belief.The film only grew in stature for me on a second viewing, which cemented it’s intelligence and unique perspective in managing to keep us caught up not only in Carols, but in the angry, violent, crazy, desperate and lost people around him, and to keep them all human enough to stay absorbed by, without forgiving their grievous sins. A beautiful walking of the tightrope of empathy but not sympathy.The last 1/3 is the most challenging section. Carlos’s slow decline into ineffectiveness and unimportance is slower, and less viscerally exciting. But this seems unavoidable after the high paced rush of the first two parts and also seems part of the point of the film, Without his fixes of women and power there wasn’t really much to Carlos and with those gone both he - and eventually we - want it to be over.This is a challenging, brilliantly acted, wonderfully made film, that gives context both to modern terrorism and recent world history. along with intelligently exploring the fine line between power and uncontrolled narcissism that seems to dog (especially male) charismatic leaders of all stripes, types and political persuasions from Hitler to Bill Clinton to Carlos. That’s a lot to cover successfully, even in 5 hours.

Phenomenal movie. And this full version (5+ hours) instead of the theatrical cut which comes in under 3 hours.

This is a fascinating and extremely exciting film, one of the all time greats in my view. Edgar Ramirez does a remarkable job as Carlos. The casting is generally excellent with a huge variety of different linguistic and ethnic parts played with an astonishing degree of accuracy, even their English accents, when they speak English, matches reality. The one fault, and it is a huge and quite unnecessary fault, is the decision to only subtitle when English is not spoken. There is hardly a native English part anywhere and most English accents are very thick and hard to understand even for those that may be familiar with such accents. For those that have little experience in this field, large parts of the English dialoge, (which I estimate to be about a third of the total), are extremely hard to follow. An infuriating failure! I have marked down the final rating purely because of this serious shortcoming. Criterion told me this release would have full English subtitles. This is sadly not so. In addition the subtitles they do have are all inside the picture frame. The Optimum region B release has sharper subtitles that are outside the frame and consequently more readable when single line. The Optimum is a little lighter with the colour and I found it better. Where the Criterion scores is with the extras that are really excellent and this release is worth buying for these alone. However Criterion again exhibit their characteristic defect by making little effort to make their subtitles readable and for much of the extras it is hard going. I am at a loss to understand Criterion in this respect. They do wonderful picture transfers, good sound and usually a really interesting range of extras BUT their subtitles are more often than not sub-standard, especially in the extras. Seven Samurai is another example where their release is severely compromised by incompetent subtitle managment. This release does not have the short version of the film as given by Optimum but having watched both I feel this is not much of a loss. For the film the Optimum transfer is slightly better but despite sloppy attention to subtitling this Criterion has by far the best extras. If you can play A & B get both! Watch the film on the Optimum and the extras, which are as good as the film, on the Criterion. If only Criterion would look at their products from the customers point of view and sharpen up their internal quality control!

I was thoroughly impressed with this movie and thought Edgar Ramirez did an incredible job of portraying the Jackal. I remember studying him and his crimes in college and his rogue, often loud, reckless and immature approach of “look at me everyone” was nailed perfectly. Ramirez has become a favorite actor of mine and every time I see him in something new, he never disappoints. Carrying a movie like this as the lead, is no small feat but he did it without a wrinkle and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This is the first blue ray / dvd I purchased in over 10 years.It comes with a cool booklet breaking down the timeline and background of the key players on the story, and fully fleshes out the story of Carlos.The 90 minute movie you can find on any other streaming service falls so short of the full miniseries.100% worth it.

hello,this movie was ok in the suspense part mainly because we had already lived through many carlos movies. the real movie clips from the era were familiar as it was front page news. the disclaimer at the beginning held true. history always had characters like this and it is very unfortunate that people are in some sort of conflict. will it ever be solved or put to rest? probably not as long as different ideology persists, there will be conflict. the movie was ok, not excellent.