Hijacking your Saturday night
Carlos detains a crowded theater's attention for 5.5 hours
- The film makes Carlos the Jackal look like a hero of the people, but historyargues he is a horror to the masses.
- Carlos makes kidnapping OPEC oil ministers in 1975 look like a total breeze.
- If you're not careful, Carlos the Jackal will hijack your entire night.
- The film paused for two intermissions and kept audience members in captivityuntil midnight.
- Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal stands trial in 2011 forcriminal charges.
- Edgar Ramirez bears a striking resemblance to the original gangster.
The Brown Auditorium Theater was packed Saturday night for the third viewing of Carlos (2010), a five-and-a-half hour epic on modern terrorism.
The film tells the story of the revolutionary terrorist Illich Ramírez Sánchez, a.k.a Carlos the Jackal, famously known for the 1975 OPEC kidnapping of oil ministers in Vienna. French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, managed to hold the auditorium’s full attention well into the first intermission.
Houstonians sat on the edge of their seats as Édgar Ramírez resurrected scenes of airport shootings, torturous romances and bank bombings. It was only after the second intermission around 10 p.m. when a small helping of audience members decided to call it quits.
The film, originally intended and created as a mini-series for television audiences, comes out in perfect timing — right before the Oscars and a couple of months before the Jackal’s pending trial date set for 2011.
An internationally friendly film, Assayas’ feature is set in at least 16 countries and speaks in five different languages. In one scene, the Jackal, Venezuelan-born, shoots at some Stasi policemen stalking his operations in Hungary and mutters “babosos,” (Spanish for “slobbering idiot”) — a line that released laughter from a diverse crowd of committed audience members.
Only in Houston, right?