Review of Carlos (2010) by Robert K — 01 Sep 2011

Barely tolerable. First off it looked like made for T.V. programming, not much like a real movie. It was obvious that a ton of content was chopped out of the story and I have to assume that's why it seemed so fragmented.

Apparently the T.V. version was 5 plus hours. The acting was mediocre, the directing not particularly impressive. I've heard this described as extremely worthwhile historical perspective. My main question is this.

If you butcher the content down to 2.5 hours from 5.5 hours is it really necessary to devote 15 minutes to his testicular issues? Did we need to fit in some meaningless sex scenes when there wasn't time for any details as to what motivates these terrorists and what 'any' of their actual objectives are? This movie portrayed the terrorists as a bunch of stupid mercenaries without any intelligent or rational reasons for doing the things they do.

Constant vague mentions of a 'cause' do little to give us any insight as to what makes these people tick. Is it just that we in the western world are so willing to accept that that's all these people amount to? Had I not paid for it and was sitting at home watching this, I would have turned it off about 20 minutes in, and I'd have been right to do so.