599 - Carlos, Part 1, France, 2010. Dir. Olivier Assayas.

Saturday, February 9, 2019

599 - Carlos, Part 1, France, 2010.  Dir. Olivier Assayas.

Mohammed Boudia awakens with his girlfriend and gets dressed for the day.

His car explodes.


Mohammed Boudia worked for the PFLP.  The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

He was targeted by MOSSAD.  The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations.  A counter-terrorist unit from Israel.

Which was itself responding in part to the Black September bombings at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

If you have seen Steven Spielberg's movie Munich (2005), then you have witnessed a telling of that story.  This story overlaps with that story just a little bit here in the beginning, and follows the action forward and from the point of view of the other side.

Time to replace Boudia.

The leader, Waddi Haddad, brings the new man from Jordan to London to see if he is ready.

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez is the man for the job.

Sanchez hails from Venezuela.  He was born in 1949.  In 1951 his brother Lenin was born.  In 1958 his brother Vladimir was born.  His father apparently had a thing for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.  Sanchez received Communist training first in Cuba and then in Moscow.

He gets his assignment.  He goes to London.  He informs people that his name is now Carlos.

Carlos is a strong leader.  He consolidates power.  His early missions fail but he makes adjustments.  He goes to France.

The head of Carlos' unit, Michel Moukharbal--Andre--betrays Carlos by fingering him to the police.  Carlos gets away by shooting himself out of an apartment.

He retreats to Yemen where at first he lets himself go.  But then Haddad makes him go back into training for a new mission he has for him.  In Austria.

Carlos now leads a team in Vienna, where they take hostages during the OPEC meeting.


This film is a grand project for Olivier Assayas.  It runs 5 hours, 39 minutes, and its characters speak in 8 different languages  English, Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, and Japanese.




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This film is the result of historical and journalistic research.

Because of controversial gray areas in Carlos' life, the film must be viewed as fiction, tracing two decades in the life of a notorious terrorist.

His relations with other characters have been fictionalized as well.

The three murder on Rue Toulier are the only events depicted in this film for which Ilich Ramirez Sanchez was tried and sentenced.

The Drugstore Publicis bombing is still under investigation.

Paris, June 28, 1973