Carlos

Directed by Olivier Assayas. Starring Édgar Ramírez, Alexander Scheer, Nora von Waldstätten, Ahmad Kaabour, Christoph Bach, Susanne Wuest, Anna Thalbach, Julia Hummer 15A cert, IFI, Dublin, 165 min

Choppy editing detracts from but doesn't scuttle this interesting French television drama, anchored by a charismatic central performance from Édgar Ramírez, writes Tara Brady

IN THE 1970s and 1980s, a former freedom fighter known as Carlos the Jackal hijacked his way across western Europe and into public consciousness. Today the Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (as it says on his birth certificate) still holds a romantic revolutionary appeal for many South Americans – including Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez – and committed militants. No wonder somebody thought to give him the full cinematic treatment.

Forged from the same mould as Jean-François Richet's Mesrinesequence, this biopic concerning the trials and tribulations of the former Cold War terrorist was cut down from a major three-part mini-series for French TV. And, by golly, it shows.

Don't get us wrong. This is quality product with talented folks attached, bearing little or no resemblance to the debacle that was 2008's The Baader Meinhof Complex.

Who, after all, could fault art-house darling Olivier Assayas, who directs, or Édgar Ramírez who makes for an outstanding, charismatic antihero?

Still, there’s something not quite right about this 165-minute cut. Bit players often arrive and depart as if through an unseen revolving door, some scenes whizz by, others hang there for reasons we couldn’t quite determine. (A 330-minute version, also showing at the Irish Film Institute, is infinitely preferable if you can manage a week or so off work.)

There is, happily, still plenty to admire here. Wisely eschewing the option of exploring Carlos’s inner demons or childhood traumas, the film keeps pace with its firebrand subject as he tears into the establishment.

Between a daring raid on a 1975 Opec meeting in Vienna and his attempt to assassinate the head of Marks Spencer, the Jackal finds time to become a husband and a father. However, like the Genesis story, his domestic arrangements don’t get a look in. Instead, we’re presented with a flurry of illegal activity, a blur of locations and a brilliant study of swaggering masculinity.

As the film progresses across the Jackal’s various stomping grounds – Palestine, Hungary, Romania, Sudan – one starts to suspect they need the space for Édgar Ramírez’s blistering central turn.