This is the best thriller I’ve seen in a long time. I was reminded of Munich and Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex, but Carlos captures the chaos of this era a lot better than those. Assayas has a way of blending the violence with the regular daily life stuff that makes it feel very natural; one of the results is that the background level of tension is increased by a lot. I recommend watching the full 338min version; the excitement fizzles a bit after the first half but it’s never boring.

And Édgar Ramirez is of course fantastic, although he might too good at languages? Normally when an actor starts speaking a foreign language I cringe, but here I was wondering if the real-life Carlos could have actually learned to speak that many languages fluently.