Carlos's

Little of the film is about Carlos's super-inflated reputation in the media, though it might be interesting to make a movie about him in which he never appears on screen.

Carlos – review Peter Bradshaw 2010

Carlos's eventual capture and imprisonment in the 1990s, revealing him to be abjectly human, was a real letdown, as if Osama Bin Laden had been arrested working in a Carphone Warehouse in Watford.

Carlos – review Peter Bradshaw 2010

Finally the Berlin Wall comes down, taking Carlos's career with it, and he appears a sleazy and seedy figure, washed up in Sudan where he improbably claims to be a Muslim, getting liposuction for his "love-handles" and apparently evincing not the smallest interest in the Palestinian people.

Carlos – review Peter Bradshaw 2010

Carlos's lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who also happens to be his wife (they married in a Muslim ceremony in prison after he converted to Islam), took the film-makers to court to attempt to get access to the screenplay, in order to set the record straight, a move which was "legally absolutely incoherent", says Assayas, especially since Carlos never told the truth about many events anyway, and is supposedly still awaiting trial next year on others.

Carlos director Olivier Assayas on the terrorist who became a pop culture icon Steve Rose 2010

Assayas sees Carlos's greatest moment as containing the seed of his downfall: his storming of the Opec convention in Vienna in 1975 during which he and his gang took hostages but failed to carry out the secret plan of killing some of them – most prominently Saudi Arabia's Sheik Ahmed Yamani – a perceived failure of nerve that caused his expulsion from the PFLP.

Carlos – review Peter Bradshaw 2010

And getting legal representation from Jacques Vergès (Nicolas Briançon) – the notoriously amoral fast-talker beloved of murderers and tyrants, and investigated in Barbet Schroeder's documentary Terror's Advocate – accelerates Carlos's descent into cynicism.

Carlos – review Peter Bradshaw 2010

Not that this makes him happy - at least according to "The Social Network," which views Zuckerberg's entrepreneurial ascent as coolly as Assayas does Carlos's terrorism.

Carlos And Zuckerberg: The Men, Myths, Movies 2010

Not that this makes him happy - at least according to "The Social Network," which views Zuckerberg's entrepreneurial ascent as coolly as Assayas does Carlos's terrorism.

Carlos And Zuckerberg: The Men, Myths, Movies 2010

Not that this makes him happy - at least according to "The Social Network," which views Zuckerberg's entrepreneurial ascent as coolly as Assayas does Carlos's terrorism.

Carlos And Zuckerberg: The Men, Myths, Movies 2010

In 1975, shortly after the international terrorist now known as "Carlos" first gained notoriety by shooting two French detectives and an informer in Paris, Barry Woodhams, boyfriend of an ex-girlfriend of Carlos's, found a bag of weapons belonging to the trigger-happy terrorist in their London apartment.

Carlos director Olivier Assayas on the terrorist who became a pop culture icon Steve Rose 2010