Series directed by: Olivier Assayas
Written by: Olivier Assayas, Dan Franck and Daniel Leconte
The story of Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, who founded a worldwide terrorist organization and raided the 1975 OPEC meeting.
I'm tagging this as "mini-series" and "TV" even if I saw the 185 minute long movie cut. Now of course I haven't seen all the footage I could've, but I'm going to write this piece based on what I did see.
I actually chose to see Carlos (or Carlos the Jackal which seems to be the name here and in some other places) very randomly. My friend just picked something out for me because she thought I was wasting too much time browsing in the video store. I had actually knew nothing about Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, aka Carlos, prior to seeing this. I'm not exactly sure why there was such a gap in my knowledge, but as I learned he was an actual person (learned this from my dad before I watched the movie or series) the whole story became much more interesting. Of course there's the "this is work of fiction" announcement at the beginning, so there's still the "what's true and what's not" since I haven't done research like at all.
Apparently that doesn't matter when watching Carlos. If you know, it's intriguing to see the fictional side of this, if you know nothing, it's intriguing to learn about everything.
In the movie cut the structure is a bit hard to follow sometimes. Characters come and go, time doesn't mean anything... But after I learned it's a mini-series it makes more sense. They had to cut like two hours. Still they saved an awful lot of the OPEC stuff while skipping the 80's completely. Now I don't know how long the OPEC situation is in the series, did they cut a lot or did they want to keep that whole thing, but it felt longer than any other part of the movie. It kind of ate the balance. It seemed like that was the point instead of, you know, Sánchez's life in general.
Also sometimes the music is a bit weird. Like it's good music but feels somewhat ill-fitting for the movie and what it's about.
All in all the story is definitely intriguing and from all the research I did do, Edgar Ramírez is extremely talented and a good choice for the lead role.The biggest problem is how much was cut and how rushed everything feels and what important events didn't make the movie version. Maybe I should watch the whole mini-series some day, to be able to give this a better, more accurate rating.
I'm tagging this as "mini-series" and "TV" even if I saw the 185 minute long movie cut. Now of course I haven't seen all the footage I could've, but I'm going to write this piece based on what I did see.
I actually chose to see Carlos (or Carlos the Jackal which seems to be the name here and in some other places) very randomly. My friend just picked something out for me because she thought I was wasting too much time browsing in the video store. I had actually knew nothing about Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, aka Carlos, prior to seeing this. I'm not exactly sure why there was such a gap in my knowledge, but as I learned he was an actual person (learned this from my dad before I watched the movie or series) the whole story became much more interesting. Of course there's the "this is work of fiction" announcement at the beginning, so there's still the "what's true and what's not" since I haven't done research like at all.
Apparently that doesn't matter when watching Carlos. If you know, it's intriguing to see the fictional side of this, if you know nothing, it's intriguing to learn about everything.
In the movie cut the structure is a bit hard to follow sometimes. Characters come and go, time doesn't mean anything... But after I learned it's a mini-series it makes more sense. They had to cut like two hours. Still they saved an awful lot of the OPEC stuff while skipping the 80's completely. Now I don't know how long the OPEC situation is in the series, did they cut a lot or did they want to keep that whole thing, but it felt longer than any other part of the movie. It kind of ate the balance. It seemed like that was the point instead of, you know, Sánchez's life in general.
Also sometimes the music is a bit weird. Like it's good music but feels somewhat ill-fitting for the movie and what it's about.
All in all the story is definitely intriguing and from all the research I did do, Edgar Ramírez is extremely talented and a good choice for the lead role.The biggest problem is how much was cut and how rushed everything feels and what important events didn't make the movie version. Maybe I should watch the whole mini-series some day, to be able to give this a better, more accurate rating.
☆☆☆☆☆☆
6 / 10
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